• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.544-554
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• 2001

A shop floor can be considered as an important level to develop Computer Integrated Manufacturing system (CIMs). However, a shop floor is a dynamic environment where unexpected events continuously occur, and impose changes to the planned activities. To deal with this problem, a shop floor should adopt an appropriate control system that is responsible for the coordination and control of the manufacturing physical flow and information flow. In this paper, a hybrid control system is described with a shop floor activity methodology called Multi-Layered Task Initiation Diagram (MTD). The architecture of the control model contains three levels: i.e., he shop floor controller (SFC), the intelligent agent controller (IAC) and the equipment controller (EC). The methodology behind the development of the control system is an intelligent multi-agent paradigm that enables the shop floor control system to be an independent, an autonomous, and distributed system, and to achieve an adaptability to change of the manufacturing environment.