Design of an object-oriented system for manufacturing planning and control

Abstract

This paper describes the design of an object-oriented system for manufacturing planning and control of a job-shop. Job shop entities such as cells, machines, jobs, parts, and schedules are modeled as objects. The architecture of the system is derived from knowledge-based systems and computer simulation. It is observed that the object-oriented design facilitates knowledge-based machine interaction and real-time control of operations in the shop. The paper also summarizes the details of our on-going research project and tlie implementation of the system on a workstation.