• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1995.04a
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• pp.208-215
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• 1995

Numerous solution methods for scheduling problems such as part dispatching problem, operation sequence problem have been suggested as a means to be embedded in hierarchical or centralized shop floor control. Under the preceding control philosophies, however, response to changes in the shop floor status is quite slow and timely decision is sometimes impossible. Moreover, the control software becomes too large and it is almost impossible to modify the control software when the configuration of the shop floor changes. In agile manufacturing which emerged recently to cope with quick response and easy modifiability when unexpected changes occur, a new control policy is needed. CSCW[Computer Supported Cooperative Work] based shop floor control casts a different view on scheduling problems. Decisions are made locally when requested and useful information is scattered among agents for its efficient use. Adaptation is easy because agents are -'plug compatible or portable. In this paper, scheduling problems occurring under CSCW based shop floor control are identified and characterized. Traditional scheduling problems are reviewed from the CSCW viewpoint. All the control entities involved in the shop floor can be found and used to defined agents. With these entities and CSCW concept, possible scheduling problems are identified.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.124-131
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• 2000

A shop floor can be considered as and importand level to develop a Computer Integrated Manufacturing system (CIMs). The shop foor is a dynamic environment where unexpected events contrinuously occur, and impose changes to planned activities. The shop floor should adopt an appropriate control system that is responsible for scheduling coordination and moving the manufacturing material and information flow. In this paper, the architecture of the hybrid control model identifies three levels; i.e., the shop floor controller (SFC), the cell controller(CC) and the equipment controller (EC). The methodology for developing these controller is employ an object-oriented approach for static models and IDEF0 for function models for dispatching a job. SFC and CC are coordinated by employing a multi-factors bidding and an adapted Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) prove applicability of the suggested method. Test experiment has been conducted by with the shopfloor, consisting of six manufacturing cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1996.04a
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• pp.619-622
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• 1996

This paper presents the formal integration of process planning and shop floor control with Petri net formalism. Formal integration means that both planning and control problems can be modeled, interfaced, and transformed with the Petri net formalism. This integrated framework provides a systematic approach for rapidly developing a formal shop floor controller from process planning with respect to shop floor configuration.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.15-15
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• 1996

A shop floor control system (SFCS) is the central part of a CIM system used to control the activities of several pieces of manufacturing equipment (e.g., NC machines, robots, conveyors, AGVs, AS/RS). The SFCS receives orders and related process plans, and then performs selecting a specific process routing, allocating resources, scheduling the workpieces, downloading the processing instructions (e.g., RS-274 instructions for NC machines, VAL II programs for robot), monitoring the progress of activities, detecting and recovering from errors, and preparing reports on the status of the manufacturing system. Simulation has been utilized in discovering control policies used for resolving shop floor be control problems such as resource contentions, part dispatching, deadlock. The simulation model must be designed to respond to real-time data coming from a shop floor. However, to rapidly build a realtime simulation model of SFCS cannot be easily accomplished. This talk is to address an automatic program generator of discrete event simulation model for shop floor control from process plans and resource models. The program generator is capable of constructing complete discrete simulation models for multi-product and multi-stage flexible manufacturing systems.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.719-739
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• 1996

A common control model used to implement computer integrated manufacturing(CIM) is based on the hierarchical decomposition of the shop floor activities, in which supervisory controllers are responsible for all the interactions among subordinates. Although the hierarchical control philosophy provides for easy understanding of complex systems, an emerging manufacturing paradigm, agile manufacturing, requires a new control structure necessary to accommodate the rapid development of a shop floor controller. This is what is called autonomous agent-based heterarchical control. As computing resources and communication network on the shop floor become increasingly intelligent and powerful, the new control architecture is about to come true in a modern CIM system. In this paper, heterarchical control is adopted and investigated, in which a controller for a unit of device performs three main functions - planning, scheduling and execution. Attention is paid to the planning function and all the detailed planning activities for heterarchical shop floor control are identified. Interactions with other functions are also addressed. In general, planning determines tasks to be scheduled in the future. In other words, planning analyzes process plans and transforms process plans into detailed plans adequate for shop floor control. Planning is also responsible for updating a process plan and identifying/resolving replanning activities whether they come from scheduling or execution.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1995.04a
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• pp.185-192
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• 1995

A common control model used to implement computer integrated manufacturing(CIM) is based on the hierarchical decomposition of the shop floor activities, in which supervisory controllers are responsible for all the interactions among subordinates. Although the hierarchical control philosophy provides for easy understanding of complex systems, an emerging manufacturing paradigm, agile manufacturing, requires a new control structure necessary to accommodate the rapid development of a shop floor controller. This is what is called CSCW(computer supported cooperative work)-based control or component-based heterarchical control. As computing resources and communication network on the shop floor become increasingly intelligent and powerful, the new control architecture is about to come true in a modern CIM system. In this paper, CSCW-based control is adopted and investigated, in which a controller for a unit of device performs 3 main functions - planning, scheduling and execution. In this paper, attention is paid to a planning function and all the detailed planning activities for CSCW-based shop floor control are identified. Interactions with other functions are also addressed. Generally speaking, planning determines tasks to be scheduled in the future. In other words, planning analyzes process plans and transforms process plans into detailed plans adequate for shop floor control. Planning is also responsible for updating the process plan and identifying/resolving replanning activities whether they come from scheduling or execution.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.20 no.44
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• pp.47-60
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• 1997

Today, more and more information is processed in the shop floor The main function of the shop floor is more enlarged and enriched by the integration of information processing tasks. So, we have designed the shop floor control information system(SFCIS) considered using the IDEF methodology. The SFCIS consists of 5 sub-systems, which are the manufacturing data base, the order release, the dynamic scheduling, the process control, and the output analysis sub-system. And we have constructed the SFCIS for long-cycle products, which have production lead time longer than the period of production planning horizon.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.176-181
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• 2001

Due to the increasing complexity to handle conflicts and interruptions caused by resource failures and rush orders, shop control is obliged to redesign its organization according to the changing demands of the manufacturing control. These demands are leading to the development of decentralization and gradually to their permanent optimization. As a result, a powerful modeling method which can be adapted efficiently is required. The use of agent theory enables specific modeling of the relevant shop planning activities. The planning activities are modeled in a so-called activity modeling through the definition of three classes of agents; Plan Agent, Manufacturing System Agent and Control Agent as well as the description of the cooperative relationship among these agents. On the basis of the activity model the agent-based shop control method is developed which emphasizes the distributed problem-solving and the cooperation with relevant agents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.135-138
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• 2000

This paper is intended to propose what manufacturing configuration (manufacturing planning and shop floor control) is suitable for the tire industry. Basically tire-manufacturing process is mixed-products, parallel-disconnected-flow-shop. Both throughput time and cycle tine are very short, the variety of tires is very high, the setup time is long, shop floor data reporting requirements is high, and there are many equipments and people working. And with no exception, tire industry also now confronts increasing requirements of delivery conformance with the above peculiar characteristics of tire manufacturing and changing market environments, this paper suggests, weekly master scheduling with no MRP is desirable and traditional kanban is right selection for shop floor control/scheduling. This paper describes why this configuration should be, using the manufacturing engineering principles and some new insights like four primitives of parallel flow shop. Generally known that shop with high parallel-product-mix and long setup time isn't good candidate for kanban. The four primitives of parallel flow shop explain why kanban is also useful scheduling technique in that environment.