Flexible SOA Based Platform for Research on Start-Up Procedures for Reconfigurable Production Machines

Abstract

Starting-up production machines is a complicated task and takes a substantial part of time and expenses. Especially, in the field of reconfigurable machining systems (RMS), where changes in the machines occur regularly, a short start-up phase is essential. Many activities, which are necessary during the start-up can be automated. Among them are the configuration of control- and field-bus systems, user interfaces, and industrial automation devices, as well as the extensive testing of functions. In reconfigurable manufacturing the concept of mechatronic modularization leads to new system boundaries. As a result, RMS are composed of diverse mechatronic modules (MM) which contain mechanical and electrical components as well information technology. This paper presents an approach to automate the start-up of a RMS by applying a machine-internal service-oriented architecture. Moreover, a reference platform is presented, which can be used for research on the automatic generation of start-up procedures for RMS systems. Modules contain not only a range of mechatronic functions, but also additional software and Web-Services, which support the automatic start-up of a machine. Internal Web-Service communication is handled by a Service-Bus whose communication is tunneled through an automation-bus system. Thus, deterministic real-time communication can be combined with flexible Web-Service communication for the configuration and set-up of MM. Moreover, every MM is equipped with a real-time simulation model for mechanical and electrical parts and a database to store module specific data like CAD models, module descriptions, and software components. The functionality for configuring MMs and the start-up sequence generation for the machining system is provided by an internal configuration system based on Web-Services. Finally, a RMS system can be automatically put into operation by means of the configuration system which derives and executes an automatically generated start-up sequence.