700 research outputs found

    MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS FOR SHOP FLOOR ARHITECTURE MANAGEMENT

    Get PDF
    The paper presents the problem of shop floor agility. In order to cope with the disturbances and uncertainties that characterise the current business scenarios faced by manufacturing companies, the capability of their shop floors needs to be improved quickly, such that these shop floors may be adapted, changed or become easily modifiable (shop floor reengineering). One of the critical elements in any shop floor reengineering process is the way the control/supervision architecture is changed or modified to accommodate for the new process and equipment. This paper, therefore, proposes an multi-agent architecture to support the fast adaptation or changes in the control/supervision architecture.multi-agent system, shop floor agility, control/supervision architecture, virtual organisation.

    Coalition based approach for shop floor agility – a multiagent approach

    Get PDF
    Dissertation submitted for a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, speciality of Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiĂȘncias e TecnologiaThis thesis addresses the problem of shop floor agility. In order to cope with the disturbances and uncertainties that characterise the current business scenarios faced by manufacturing companies, the capability of their shop floors needs to be improved quickly, such that these shop floors may be adapted, changed or become easily modifiable (shop floor reengineering). One of the critical elements in any shop floor reengineering process is the way the control/supervision architecture is changed or modified to accommodate for the new processes and equipment. This thesis, therefore, proposes an architecture to support the fast adaptation or changes in the control/supervision architecture. This architecture postulates that manufacturing systems are no more than compositions of modularised manufacturing components whose interactions when aggregated are governed by contractual mechanisms that favour configuration over reprogramming. A multiagent based reference architecture called Coalition Based Approach for Shop floor Agility – CoBASA, was created to support fast adaptation and changes of shop floor control architectures with minimal effort. The coalitions are composed of agentified manufacturing components (modules), whose relationships within the coalitions are governed by contracts that are configured whenever a coalition is established. Creating and changing a coalition do not involve programming effort because it only requires changes to the contract that regulates it

    The Cobasa Architecture as an Answer to Shop Floor Agility

    Get PDF

    Service-oriented architecture for device lifecycle support in industrial automation

    Get PDF
    Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia ElectrotĂ©cnica e de Computadores Especialidade: RobĂłtica e Manufactura IntegradaThis thesis addresses the device lifecycle support thematic in the scope of service oriented industrial automation domain. This domain is known for its plethora of heterogeneous equipment encompassing distinct functions, form factors, network interfaces, or I/O specifications supported by dissimilar software and hardware platforms. There is then an evident and crescent need to take every device into account and improve the agility performance during setup, control, management, monitoring and diagnosis phases. Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm is currently a widely endorsed approach for both business and enterprise systems integration. SOA concepts and technology are continuously spreading along the layers of the enterprise organization envisioning a unified interoperability solution. SOA promotes discoverability, loose coupling, abstraction, autonomy and composition of services relying on open web standards – features that can provide an important contribution to the industrial automation domain. The present work seized industrial automation device level requirements, constraints and needs to determine how and where can SOA be employed to solve some of the existent difficulties. Supported by these outcomes, a reference architecture shaped by distributed, adaptive and composable modules is proposed. This architecture will assist and ease the role of systems integrators during reengineering-related interventions throughout system lifecycle. In a converging direction, the present work also proposes a serviceoriented device model to support previous architecture vision and goals by including embedded added-value in terms of service-oriented peer-to-peer discovery and identification, configuration, management, as well as agile customization of device resources. In this context, the implementation and validation work proved not simply the feasibility and fitness of the proposed solution to two distinct test-benches but also its relevance to the expanding domain of SOA applications to support device lifecycle in the industrial automation domain

    A Layered Software Architecture for the Management of a Manufacturing Company

    Get PDF
    In this paper we describe a layered software architecture in the management of a manufactur-ing company that intensively uses computer technology. Application tools, new and legacy, after the updating, operate in a context of an open web oriented architecture. The software architecture enables the integration and interoperability among all tools that support business processes. Manufacturing Executive System and Text Mining tools are excellent interfaces, the former both for internal production and management processes and the latter for external processes coming from the market. In this way, it is possible to implement, a computer integrated factory, flexible and agile, that immediately responds to customer requirements.ICT, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services, Computer-Integrated Factory, Application Software

    Collaborative environment to support a professional community

    Get PDF
    Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de CiĂȘncias e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia ElectrotĂ©cnica e de ComputadoresRecent manufacturing roadmaps stress current production systems limitations, emphasizing social, economic and ecologic consequences for Europe of a non-evolution to sustainable Production Systems. Hence, both academic institutions and enterprises are committed to develop solutions that would endow enterprises to survive in nowadays’ extremely competitive business environment. A research effort is being carried on by the Evolvable Production Systems consortium towards attaining Production Systems that can cope with current technological, economical, ecological and social demands fulfilling recent roadmaps. Nevertheless research success depends on attaining consensus in the scientific community and therefore an accurate critical mass support is required in the whole process. The main goal of this thesis is the development of a Collaborative Environment Tool to assist Evolvable Production Systems consortium in such research efforts and to enhance Evolvable Assembly Systems paradigm dissemination. This work resulted in EASET (Evolvable Assembly Systems Environment Tool), a collaborative environment tool which promotes EAS dissemination and brings forth improvements through the raise of critical mass and collaboration between entities

    Service-oriented infrastructure to support the control, monitoring and management of a shop floor system

    Get PDF
    Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresService-oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm is becoming a broadly deployed standard for business and enterprise integration. It continuously spreads across the distinct layers of the enterprise organization and disparate domains of application, envisioning a unified communication solution. Service-oriented approaches are also entering the industrial automation domain in a top-down way. The recent application at device level has a direct impact on how industrial automation deployments will evolve. Similarly to other domains, the crescent ubiquity of smart devices is raising important lifecycle concerns related to device control, monitoring and management. From initial setup and deployment to system lifecycle monitoring and evolution, each device needs to be taken into account and to be easily reachable. The current work includes the specification and development of a modular, adaptive and open infrastructure to support the control, monitoring and management of devices and services in an industrial automation environment, such as a shop floor system. A collection of tools and services to be comprised in this same infrastructure will also be researched and implemented. Moreover, the main implementation focuses on a SOA-based infrastructure comprising SemanticWeb concepts to enhance the process of exchanging a device in an industrial automation environment. This is done by assisting (and even automate)this task supported by service and device semantic matching whenever a device has a problem. The infrastructure was implemented and tested in an educational shop floor setup composed by a set of distributed entities each one controlled by its own SOAready PLC. The performed tests revealed that the tasks of discovering and identifying new devices, as well as providing assistance when a device is down offered a valuable contribution and can increase the agility of the overall system when dealing with operation disruptions or modifications at device level

    An approach to resource modelling in support of the life cycle engineering of enterprise systems

    Get PDF
    Enterprise modelling can facilitate the design, analysis, control and construction of contemporary enterprises which can compete in world-wide Product markets. This research involves a systematic study of enterprise modelling with a particular focus on resource modelling in support of the life cycle engineering of enterprise systems. This led to the specification and design of a framework for resource modelling. This framework was conceived to: classify resource types; identify the different functions that resource modelling can support, with respect to different life phases of enterprise systems; clarify the relationship between resource models and other modelling perspectives provide mechanisms which link resource models and other types of models; identify guidelines for the capture of information - on resources, leading to the establishment of a set of resource reference models. The author also designed and implemented a resource modelling tool which conforms to the principles laid down by the framework. This tool realises important aspects of the resource modeffing concepts so defined. Furthermore, two case studies have been carried out. One models a metal cutting environment, and the other is based on an electronics industry problem area. In this way, the feasibility of concepts embodied in the framework and the design of the resource modelling tool has been tested and evaluated. Following a literature survey and preliminary investigation, the CIMOSA enterprise modelling and integration methodology was adopted and extended within this research. Here the resource modelling tool was built by extending SEWOSA (System Engineering Workbench for Open System Architecture) and utilising the CIMBIOSYS (CINI-Building Integrated Open SYStems) integrating infrastructure. The main contributions of the research are that: a framework for resource modelling has been established; means and mechanisms have been proposed, implemented and tested which link and coordinate different modelling perspectives into an unified enterprise model; the mechanisms and resource models generated by this research support each Pfe phase of systems engineering projects and demonstrate benefits by increasing the degree to which the derivation process among models is automated

    The Management of Manufacturing-Oriented Informatics Systems Using Efficient and Flexible Architectures

    Get PDF
    Industry and in particular the manufacturing-oriented sector has always been researched and innovated as a result of technological progress, diversification and differentiation among consumers' demands. A company that provides to its customers products matching perfectly their demands at competitive prices has a great advantage over its competitors. Manufacturing-oriented information systems are becoming more flexible and configurable and they require integration with the entire organization. This can be done using efficient software architectures that will allow the coexistence between commercial solutions and open source components while sharing computing resources organized in grid infrastructures and under the governance of powerful management tools.Manufacturing-Oriented Informatics Systems, Open Source, Software Architectures, Grid Computing, Web-Based Management Systems

    Modeling 4.0: Conceptual Modeling in a Digital Era

    Get PDF
    Digitization provides entirely new affordances for our economies and societies. This leads to previously unseen design opportunities and complexities as systems and their boundaries are re-defined, creating a demand for appropriate methods to support design that caters to these new demands. Conceptual modeling is an established means for this, but it needs to be advanced to adequately depict the requirements of digitization. However, unlike the actual deployment of digital technologies in various industries, the domain of conceptual modeling itself has not yet undergone a comprehensive renewal in light of digitization. Therefore, inspired by the notion of Industry 4.0, an overarching concept for digital manufacturing, in this commentary paper, we propose Modeling 4.0 as the notion for conceptual modeling mechanisms in a digital environment. In total, 12 mechanisms of conceptual modeling are distinguished, providing ample guidance for academics and professionals interested in ensuring that modeling techniques and methods continue to fit contemporary and emerging requirements
    • 

    corecore