Factory-level supervision based on real-time cellular object architectures

An architecture for the supervisory control of flexible production processes at the factory level is introduced. The architecture is based on the idea of concurrent synchronous cellular logic and its extensions in the form of multi-level hierarchical structures. Active cellular objects are used to provide real-time behavioral templates which can be instantiated at any time by translating the formal process specifications given in the form of a colored Petri net. The resulting architecture exhibits high-performance characteristics through its parallel organization and very high flexibility through its modular template-like structure