Development of a Unified Modeler Framework for Virtual Manufacturing System

VMS를 위한 Unified Modeler Framework 개발

VMS (virtual manufacturing system) may be defined as a transparent interface/control mechanism to support human decision-making via simulation and monitoring of real operating situation through modeling of all activities in RMS (real manufacturing system). The three main layers in VMS are business process layer, manufacturing execution layer, and facility operation layer, and each layer is represented by a specific software system having its own input modeler module. The current version of these input modelers has been implemented based on its own 'local' framework, and as a result, there are no information sharing mechanism, nor a common user view among them. Proposed in this paper is a unified modeler framework covering the three VMS layers, in which the concept of PPR (product-process-resource) model is employed as a common semantics framework and a 2D graphic network model is used as a syntax framework. For this purpose, abstract class PPRObject and GraphicObject are defined and then a subclass is inherited from the abstract class for each application layer. This feature would make it easier to develop and maintain the individual software systems. For information sharing, XML is used as a common data format.