Open real-time interfaces for monitoring applications within NC-control systems

Process monitoring is the key to an increasing degree of automation and consequently to an increasing productivity in manufacturing. The realization of process monitoring functionality demands an extension of the control system. The prerequisite for these extensions are open interfaces in the NC-kernel. Nowadays controls with open NC-kernel interfaces are available on the market. However these interfaces are vendor specific solutions that do not allow the reuse of monitoring software in different controls. To overcome these limitations a vendor neutral open real-time interface for the integration of process monitoring functionality into the NC-kernel is presented. Additionally two implementations of the real time interface for different target systems are described.