DEMMS: a development environment to ease the manufacturing message specification (MMS) use

This paper presents DEMMS-a tool-set to ease the use of the MMS (manufacturing message specification) protocol. MMS, as a means of communication in industrial environments, is introduced, stressing the weaknesses of the protocol in these environments. These weaknesses concern the lack of timing specifications and a lack of a development environment (DE). The paper goes on showing a specification model from which the MMS objects are generated in a transparent fashion. This paper is mainly based on some research carried out by the authors. The tool-set, made of a graphical interface and a set of executive modules, is presented.