Architectural requirements for rapid development of agile manufacturing systems

Abstract

As product life cycle becomes shortened, high product quality becomes necessary for survival, and continuous and unexpected change becomes key obstacles in success, the need for a method of rapidly and cost-effectively developing products, production facilities and supporting software including design, process planning, shop floor control systems becomes urgent. The essence of this concept of manufacturing would be characterized by adopting a new term "agility". Agile manufacturing can be successfully accomplished using various well-defined system architecture. This paper provides a primary sketch of architectural requirements for rapid development of agile manufacturing systems. There are several aspects of system architecture : control, function, process, information, communication, distribution, development, and implementation. In the past, the confusion of those architectures prohibited the successful construction of the automated CIM systems.