Formal Grammars for Product Data Management on Distributed Manufacturing Systems

This work shows how formal grammars with attributes can be advantageously used to deal with two fundamental aspects of product data management - product diversity management and generation of specific product data based on clients' specification - in the context of distributed manufacturing systems, while networks of geographically distant collaborative entities. This contribution will constitute a new component for an existing model, developed by the authors, for dynamic production planning and control which includes the interoperability with industrial equipment. The proposed approach is centered on attributed formal grammars, allowing the formalization of the data representation for each family of products and also of some of the inherent processing (e.g. generation of specific products' bill-of-materials).