Emplacement and Blue Print – An Approach to Handle and Describe Modules for Evolvable Assembly Systems

Abstract

Today's production systems have presently continuous changes like load variations, new products, faults, change of process modules, etc. which require new methods to react to them quicker, sustainable and more automatically. In order to answer these requirements, the paper presents as one corner stone of the solution, a concept called Emplacement to describe, manage and use the information of process equipment in modular and reconfigurable production systems like Evolvable Assembly Systems. First the paper introduces the concept and presents the key components. It discusses also how the concept addresses the specific requirements of systems in scope. Second the implementation of the concept is presented as two standardised, XML based file formats – Emplacement and Blue Print – were developed for electronic module description. The description delivers the virtual representation of the module including information like interfaces, skills, properties (business and technical), CAD models, datasheets, etc. The interconnection between and details of these languages are discussed. Finally a case study making use of the developed languages is briefly introduced.