Human system interface for manufacturing control — Industrial implementation

In the paper current results of a project devoted to industrial implementation of Intelligent Manufacturing System (IMS) for small and medium production companies are presented. Current work is concentrated on designing and creating hardware and software infrastructure as well as human system interface (HSI). So far, hardware for a factory floor level has been selected, a preliminary industrial testbed with simple HSI was constructed and tested in a real factory, and an advanced HSI was designed and implemented. It was proven that the main development-related barrier, pointed out in the literature, for industrial deployment of IMS, i.e. absence of industrial controllers with appropriate capabilities, is out-of-date. It was shown that modern embedded PC controllers facilitate implementations of advanced HSI/HMI (human machine interface) and allow integration of human operators and manufacturing resources into an Intelligent Manufacturing Control System.