Fully Connected Autonomous Subassemblies to Enable FMS and Apply Lean’s Kanban for Workflow Management

The paper is proposing a solution by retrofitting existing machines and integrating individual process equipment to form autonomous flexible subassemblies that share a material-handling system and the same communication network. Socket communication is a technology developed on TCP/IP protocols; and it is used throughout this research study for data and information exchange. The communication part is programmed in C#. The paper demonstrates the use of XML messages for all subassemblies to share information and to exchange the product and production information with the factory database. All subassemblies have logics to verify raw material inputs with online accessible product recipes, broadcasted from the central MES, and to reconfigure proper machine settings accordingly. The communication also makes possible use of real-time Lean Kanban to identify a status of works. Kanban mechanism provides flexibility to the autonomous process; it allocates the works to an available subassembly. Data visualization is also exploited in the paper for production technicians to monitor whole subassembly performance, with regard to the availability of information stored in database.