STRUCTURED DEVELOPMENT OF A GENERIC WORKSTATION CONTROLLER

Developing Computer Integrated Manufacturing controllers is a complicated design activity. It requires mastery of the formidable complexity of manufacturing environments as well as of the hardware and software components required to build the controllers. We discuss system engineering techniques that can be applied to structure this complexity into manageable design phases. The starting point is a conceptual design of a factory wide CIM system, which describes, in manufacturing terminology, the tasks, information requirements, and performance requirements of a suite of CIM controllers. Formal, structured techniques are then available for translating the conceptual description of controllers to their detailed requirement specifications, design and computer based implementation. We demonstrate the translation techniques by reviewing the development of a particular CIM component, a workstation controller, currently in industrial use.