Toward reusable hierarchical cell control software

An approach to manufacturing system control is presented that uses a state diagram and an interpreter, both ofwhich are specifically designed for manufacturing systems. The manufacturing system's hardware components are also defined external to th econtrol software. The resulting software illustrates that a very dynamic and reusable manufacturing control system is possible. The approach is algorithmic in nature, and has been designed to be accessible to, and integrated with, an artificial intelligence portion that will be responsible for reasoning related to error recovery and system diagnosis. As a test of the control system, a manufacturing system hardward emulation program was used that included definable failure rates.