Closed-loop control in FDDI-based factory communication systems

For modern enterprises, computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) utilises supervisory control of a large scale real-time system. To be able to implement a supervisory control (dynamical network management), a reduced model of the large scale computing and communication system is a prerequisite. A reduced model is obtained in this work using the cell structure of a modern enterprise, which leads to a hierarchical modelling methodology of the information flow and the system parameter information flow. In the hierarchical modelling methodology, the development of one model of a communication system cell is sufficient for the supervisory control of the enterprise which is a widely distributed computing and communication system. The methodology reported in this work is sufficient for the modelling and analysis of a factory-wide fibre distributed data interface (FDDI) based communications system for integral plant automation.