Life cycle support of manufacturing systems based on an integration of tools

There is a growing demand for integrated manufacturing systems in the sense that the normally separate parts of an enterprise could share common resources and goals. However, such systems should be highly adaptable in response to changing needs. One way forward in coping with high levels of complexity and change is to use a formalised and structured approach which straddles design, implementation, run-time and maintenance phases of such systems thereby enabling reconfigurability over the system life cycle. Such an approach will ensure clarity, consistency, accuracy and re-utilisation of knowledge and information among the different phases. This paper reports on a methodology conceived to facilitate life cycle support for integrated manufacturing systems and the software toolset which has been developed to support implementation, run-time and change processes. the toolset combines the use of IDEF(o) (for activity based modelling), IDEF(1x) (for entity-attribute relationship modelling) and EXPRESS (for data modelling).