Model-based generation of manufacturing process plans through on-the-fly topology formation

In advanced manufacturing systems, the production of complex and highly customised products requires the preparation of many different product specifications and associated manufacturing process plans. The creation of these plans involves the search for the production resources (e.g. robots, machine tools, sensors, end effectors) that are needed to implement the product specifications, and how to orchestrate them. This paper presents a model-based approach to the automatic generation of manufacturing process plans from the models of the target products and available resources. The modelling language is based on labelled transition systems, which are useful to represent and manipulate efficiently sequences of high-level tasks that can be executed on the production resources. The proposed solution improves on existing approaches by forming the system topology on the fly while generating a process plan, creating only the topology states that are actually needed and, therefore, drastically reducing computational space and time. Experimental results demonstrate the greater computational performance and scalability of the presented techniques with an increasing number of resources, as well as the efficiency of the generated (optimal) plans. In summary, the benefits of this work are the following: minimal human intervention, as process planners only have to create the models; shorter process planning time, generation of optimal plans and, consequently, reduced manufacturing costs and shorter lead time for customised products. • Synthesised process plan controllers orchestrate available production resources. • Process recipes and production resources modelled using labelled transition systems. • Useful for reconfigurable systems where the system topology can change dynamically. • Automated plan generation can reduce process planning and manufacturing costs. • Optimal controller synthesis minimises number of synchronisations or resources.