Design aspects of reconfigurable manufacturing cells as building blocks of flexible manufacturing systems

Preliminary results and some practical examples of cell configuration, cell control design, reconfiguration, and redesign for flexible manufacturing systems performed by a hybrid expert system are given. The functions of configuration and reconfiguration are derived as the key sequences to be performed with advanced, intelligent control. The CS-PROLOG-based expert system, called ALL-EX, appears to be an effective tool to tackle this problem. An important feature of the expert system, the integrated simulation module, serves as a verification facility in the selection of an adequate configuration. Experimental results are presented