FMS Architecture for an Optimum Quality and Process Reactivity

Abstract

Difficulties of manufacturing integration and quality assurance do not only rely on the factory management functions but also in the structural and informational plant organisation. In the context of the “loop controlled flexible manufacturing cell” project financed by the “Ministère de la Recherche et de la Technologie” in FRANCE, we consider a manufacturing cell as an autonomous system which produces parts and controls their quality and which manages its own equipment, and adapts its behaviour with the objective of quality assurance. To provide decisional autonomy for local quality management and process reactivity, the cell requires a more accurate structuration than for a conventional cell-equipment architecture. After the control loop functions survey and their integration in the cell structure, we present a distributed architecture for a loop controlled cell.