Reconfigurable Knowledge-based Control Solutions for Responsive Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

Nowadays, a new generation of responsive factories is needed to face continuous changes in product demand and variety, and to manage complex and variant production processes. To such an aim, innovative selfadaptive automation solutions are required, capable to adapt their control strategies in real-time to cope with planned as well as unforeseen product and process variations. In such a context, the present paper describes an automation solution based on a modular distributed approach for agile factories integration and reconfiguration, integrating a knowledge based cooperation policy providing self-adaptation to endogenous as well as exogenous events. The proposed approach is discussed through its application to a plant for customized shoes manufacturing.

Adaptability in IEC 61499-Based Distributed Control for Automation Applications

“…According to holonic principles each component is autonomous and collaborative, so that the structure and behavior can be completely defined by the interconnection of these components in the programming environment. In [13] a solution to the automation of a custom shoe factory is presented using a distributed modular approach for agile factory integration and reconfiguration. This is through a multi-agent architecture that considers a knowledge-based cooperation policy that provides self-adaptation to both internal and external events.…”

Supervised Solutions for Precise Ratio Control: Applicability in Continuous Production Line

“…Depending on the particularities of these systems, this intervention is focused generally on stopping the production line. Certainly, the (re) configuration of some elements of the production line could be a more convenient solution than stopping the entire process, but this operation is quite sensitive and generally requires additional hardware and software resources implementation, or sometimes flow production redesign [21], [23].…”

Distributed monitoring of heterogeneous robotic cells. A proposal for the footwear industry 4.0

“…Examples of work done in footwear automated tasks include the application of adhesive to shoe soles (Wu, 2008), roughing or grinding of the bottom surface of the shoe so that the gluing process works correctly (Pedrocchi, Villagrossi, Cenati, & Tosatti, 2015;Jatta, Zanoni, Fassi, & Negri, 2004), last milling to create shoe lasts based on custom measurements (Xiong, Zhao, Jiang, & Dong, 2010), last marking to add information to them (Conte, Facchino, Marziali, & Mazzocchetti, 2013), lasting operation to secure the leather upper to the sole (Nemec, Lenart, & Zlajpah, 2003), polishing of the finished product (Zlajpah & Nemec, 2008) and shoe-packaging (Gracia et al, 2017;Perez-Vidal et al, 2018) at the end of the production line. Those processes require a high degree of flexibility to face continuous changes in product demand and variety, and to manage complex and variant production processes (Brusaferri, Ballarino, & Carpanzano, 2011).…”