Flexible Automation and Integrated Manufacturing 1996

ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-067-2

CELL CONTROL RAPID PROTOTYPING USING OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY AND SEMI STANDARDS

DOI: 10.1615/FAIM1996.290
pages 263-272

Abstrakt

We take a broader view of rapid prototyping as it applies to the development of cell control in a flexible manufacturing system. By combining the object oriented technology and compliance to emerging industrial standards, quicker evaluation of a proposed control system and shorter control system development cycles can be achieved. Specifically, we attempted to develop reusable object classes in the control cell that are compliant to the Semiconductor Equipment and Material International (SEMI) object service standard and Generic Equipment Model (GEM). The message passing and dynamic binding nature of object allows the straightforward implementation of the principal elements of the GEM for many components in the cell. In this paper, first, the physical and logical layouts of a manufacturing control cell will be presented that co-exists with hierarchical communications and cell control architecture. The cell control system has two levels. At the station level of the system, communications with equipment controllers are achieved via RS-232 interface. At the cell control level, communications are based on TCP/IP protocol. Second, an object-based cell control system binding with message passing will be presented according to SEMI object service standards and general object oriented technology. Finally, several situations in which this scheme can help to accelerate the development of cell control systems are presented. We also presented some problems encountered during this development.