Abstract control interface for job shop manufacturing systems with RMTs

The introduction of the new type of reconfigurable machine tool (RMT) requires new control strategies to effective use these tools particularly in job shop manufacturing systems. So far, several control techniques like the application of proportional-integral-differential(PID) controller, operatorbased right coprime factorization (RCF) and model predictive control (MPC) have been adopted. However, the structure, goal and efficiency of these control approaches are different from each other. To evaluate their performance and compare the efficiency of these controllers for job shop manufacturing systems with RMTs, we propose an abstract interface structure. The latter is utilized to compare the different controllers using a four-workstation job shop manufacturing system with three products.