• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.17 no.5 s.54
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• pp.82-87
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• 2003

A practical method to investigate the sharing architecture of FMS, for small and medium enterprises, on distributed heterogeneous environmental conditions is investigated. Because the industrial FMS model requires a reasonable size for actual work-site flexible operation, the initial facility expense is very heavy. The support for flexible cooperation of FMS, with some external different FMS, can reduce expenditures and provide greater functionality. While most FMS provide their operation process using an adequate mechanism, when used in isolation, such as island of automation, there is increasing demand for FMS that can cooperate. By exchanging intermediate products and information with other external FMS, products can be produced that cannot be produced alone, such as those that require various processes. This study first considers the sharing architecture of FMS for small and medium enterprises, and investigates the effects of the general sharing architecture of FMS on distributed heterogeneous environments, by using transducer approach to agentification. In this study, set-up station or in-out station takes charge of the gateway of intermediate products, and routes them among distributed heterogeneous FMS plants. The transducer approach is applied to web agent and set-up agent established interfaces, with system controller and setup controller. In this study, the FMS-established sharing architecture is able to obtain not only the internal flexibility, but also the external flexibility.