Virtual FMS architecture for FMS prototyping

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Abstract
Proposed in the paper is a V-FMS (Virtual Flexible Manufacturing System) model to be used as a prototyping tool for FMS design. The proposed V-FMS framework follows an object-oriented modeling (OOM) paradigm and is based on a set of user requirements for FMS prototyping. The V-FMS model consists of four types of object: virtual device, transfer handler, state manager and flow controller . A virtual device model, which corresponds to a “static model” in OOM. consists of two parts, shell and core, for reusability. The core part contains generic features of a manufacturing resource, and the shell part may be changed according to the changes in system configuration. A transfer handler corresponds to a “functional model” of OOM and it stores low level device commands required to perform “job” flow operations between giving and taking devices. As a result, a job flow operation can be represented in terms of detailed movements of the virtual devices involved, which provides a mechanism for calculating precise flow times and checking mechanical validity. The state manager and the flow controller constitute a “dynamic model” of OOM. The flow controller makes decisions from the decision variables, more abstract than the device level state. The mapping between the decision variables and the device level state is stored in the state manager, which serves as the guidelines for a real FMS implementation. The proposed V-FMS model has been implemented for a couple of “linear type” FMS-lines.

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