An integrated control framework for flexible manufacturing systems

This paper presents the design, development, and implementation of an integrated control framework that provides a real-time supervisory control model with limited look-ahead capability for flexible manufacturing systems. Control goals and policies are modeled and characterized by a fuzzy rule base, which is integrated with the control model. The framework consists of a finite state machine generator and a controller. The generator model is equipped with an output function and output sets. The controller model has a four-stage decision-making structure. The controller monitors performance measures of the manufacturing system and reacts according to the changes in the system states in order to keep the performance measures at desired levels. The integrated framework has been implemented on a software platform in order to validate its effectiveness. The performance of the framework has been tested on a hypothetical flexible manufacturing system using a simulation .