Enterprise Modelling

Papers and Reports:

Advances in modelling, control and integration of manufacturing facilities

F.B. Vernadat, (Ed.) Special Issue IJCIM, Advances in modelling, control and integration of manufacturing facilities.

This special issue contains papers concerned with organisation of integrated manufacturing systems operating in distributed environments. Harding and Popplewell present the results of an EPSRC project on Factory Design (see below). Cloutier et al, focus on commitment-oriented co-ordination in networked manufacturing using a multi-agent approach. A simple but efficient real-time shop floor control platform based on a hierarchical multi-agent architecture is discussed by Roy and Anciaux.
The last two papers are oriented towards enabling technologies. Mansour et al, presents an design and integration approach dealing with industrial communication and the MMS language to configure communication systems between entities of an automated production system. The specifications are made in UML. Boissier et al, proposes a Manufacturing Object Messages System based on Corba and MMS for real-time communication and distributed monitoring of numerical control as Open Manufacturing Equipment.
Intern. Journal of CIM, Vol. 14, Nr. 6, pp 514-569

J.A. Harding, K. Popplewell, Enterprise design information: the key to improved competitive advantage.
The paper provides an overview of the results of the Factory Design Process (FDP) Research done under an EPSRC grant. The design process is an information-centred, multi-view approach for design and redesign of manufacturing enterprises. At its centre is the Factory Data Model (FDM), which provides 6 key information class hierarchies (Resource, Process, Strategy, Facility, Token and Flow) that represent essential elements of any manufacturing system. The FDP includes 6 core views (Strategic, Organisation, Function, Business Process, Resource and Performance), which enable the designer to gradually build an enterprise design. Whereas five views are to collect and the relevant information and design the enterprise, the performance view allows the designer to evaluate the design.
The paper provides references to details of the FDP research and its application in a case study, in addition to the detailed description of parts of the PDF including a matrix-based tool to support the design of the Strategic View of the enterprise.
Intern. Journal of CIM, Vol. 14, Nr. 6, pp 514-521

Chengen Wang, Yu Zhang, Guoning Song, Caowan Yin, Chengbin Chu, An integration architecture for process manufacturing systems.
The architecture aimed on the process industry encompasses view models, flow models and O-O models, which support the design of manufacturing systems through their life cycle stages. The models provided can be directly converted into application programs coded in object oriented languages. In addition an information infrastructure based on Corba standards is proposed.
Five view models are defined – Product, Function, Information, Organisation and Resource - from which four flow models can be derived as relations between the function view and the other four views. These flow models are Material Flow, Information Flow, Work flow and Cost Flow. Using the view models in the requirements analysis or view design stage leads to the flow models in the preliminary or process design stage. The latter stage is followed by the entity design stage concerned with data bases, infrastructures, multi-agent systems and object designs. The concepts are elaborated in the paper using examples from the process industry.
For more information: wang@ms.sia.ac.cn
Intern. Journal of CIM, Vol. 15, Nr. 5, pp 413-426

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