Supervisory control of automated manufacturing cells with resource failures

Abstract

An important consideration in the real-time supervisory control of flexible manufacturing systems is the resource failures. These disturbances may cause pre-determined part processing sequences impossible to execute. In this paper the issue of resource failures in automated flexible manufacturing cells is addressed. Failures both during processing and in the idle mode are considered, and systematic procedures are described to re-configure the supervisor to continue operation of the system. The described supervisory controller based on finite automata formalism accommodates resource failures, while taking into consideration deadlocks and dynamic routing flexibility options when generating a set of allowable events for the real-time control of automated flexible manufacturing cells.