CONCURRENT DESIGN OF AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS USING KNOWLEDGE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) built up from smaller, complex units, i.e. from cells (FMC) are becoming typical examples of flexible systems. The design and the operation (control) of these cells need new methods to utilize all the embedded benefits of the sophisticated and expensive elements installed for production purposes. In the case of such systems the life-cycle engineering approach has an important role. This means that during the design of automated manufacturing systems the technological plans of the future products strongly have to be taken into consideration. New technologies and methods like knowledge processing technology and cooperative problem solving techniques offer wide possibilities to design more reasonable systems. The paper describes a prototype design system that makes use of different knowledge based tools and techniques to configure, or reconfigure manufacturing cells taking into consideration technological plans. There is also a possibility for analyzing the cells by simulating and animating their operation.