Different Approaches Regarding the Operational Control of Production in a Flexible Manufacturing Cell

The chapter describes several modern solutions for controlling a complex manufacturing cell, consisting of conveyors, robots, stoppers and other devices, using one programmable logical controller (PLC). The objective was to design a control system for a Holonic Planned Manufacturing System running into an Intelligent Production Cell. In order to achieve this goal, each product processed in the manufacturing cell has to be identified and its own routing / work-station jobs schedule needs to be implemented without interfering with other products. Two solutions were implemented, one using an offline planner that calculates the necessary data for processing products on pallets and the other using Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED) attached to the pallets that can take decisions by themselves in real time. A special array of data structures was used to easily access and manage the pallets processed at the four robotized stations of the cell.