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. The general framework developed by Adiga and Cogez (1993) 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. These software components can be used to create control software using visual design tools with no coding, and can be configured during both design and run time. Great emphasis has been placed on the generic features, reusability, case of use, and case 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.