Developing a shop floor scheduling and control software for an FMS

This paper is about the development of an operation software for a real FMS. The developed FMS software includes several modules: production planning module, shop floor scheduling module, operation control module, and manufacturing database module. These software modules, at shop floor level, are integrated with a plant management system, which acts as a test-bed to build a computer integrated manufacturing system (CIMS) in the future. This paper shows an imroved approach to the recently developed distributed scheduling and control scheme. To implement the scheme, a cell controller structure, protocols for scheduling and control and decision making procedures are designed. The scheme proposed in this paper is the second version of an operation software that was used to run the FMS. The revised software seems to work more efficiently and reliably, and the result of this study is currently used for operating the ASRI FMS installed in the Automation and Systems Research Institute (ASRI) at Seoul National University. To show the efficiency of the proposed scheme, a comparison study with other schemes is also included.