An approach to develop component-based control software for flexible manufacturing systems

In recent years, component-based software engineering has emerged as an approach for creating control software for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). This paper presents a state-based approach to model software components as building blocks for flexible manufacturing control software. A general framework for modeling object-oriented manufacturing software is extended to component-oriented modeling. General approaches in developing state models, control logic, and interface components are presented. Software components that simulate sensors and control activities of the work cell were also created. The simulated components can interact with or replace real system components for planning, debugging, and testing purposes. Great emphasis has been placed on the generic features, reusability, ease of use, and ease of maintenance in the design of the software components. We implemented our software components in Java and tested our design and implementation using the Miami University Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory FMS work cell. The benefits of the design were fully demonstrated through experiments at Miami.