Extending object oriented control models for intelligent manufacturing systems

The Intelligent Manufacturing Research initiative at Louisiana State University has designed and implemented an object oriented control model for a simple manufacturing cell. Using object oriented programming and design has allowed the internal program structure (virtual cell space) to closely match the physical cell construction (physical cell space). This paper discusses the second phase of the cell implementation in which the existing C++ objects were implemented as autonomous units under operating system control. The operating system used is Microsoft Windows and Windows for Workgroups 3.1. Since each object is autonomous, they can assume the properties of self-monitoring agents in the system rather than simple request servers under the sole control of the calling object. Communication between objects is facilitated by the operating system using dynamic data exchange (DDE) calls or by compiling the module into dynamic link library (DLL) modules. This arrangement of system control architecture increases system autonomy, concurrency, and ease of use for a relatively small overhead penalty