Design, Verification and Implementation of Rule Based Information Systems for Integrated Manufacturing (INSIM)

Abstract

Full control and management of information flow in an automated factory has not yet been achieved, mainly because of the data inconsistencies and lack of established functional relationships among different manufacturing application systems. Research toward CIM has concentrated on the computerization of individual functions of manufacturing, such as computer aided design and shop floor control, and the integration of data relations, such as global database frameworks and distributed database management systems. A much needed mechanism to manage and control the information flow among all of the manufacturing application systems based on company-specific and company-wide policies and procedures, is proposed here. The goal is to achieve a fully integrated manufacturing management system. The INformation system for Integrated Manufacturing (INSIM) reflects a design methodology to build a knowledge base to serve as the information control mechanism. The methodology includes the collection of rules (knowledge acquisition), their graphical modeling, systematic model validation and automated implementation to an operating production system. This design methodology features an enhanced graphic modeling tool - Updated Petri Nets (UPN) - which is capable of modeling database updates and retrievals, under specific constraints and conditions and uses a hierarchical modeling approach. Finally, a prototype knowledge based system written in Update Dependencies Language (UDL) - a special rule specification language - was implemented as a result of direct and automatic translation of UPN.