Development of a Hybrid Control and Monitoring System within a Reconfigurable Assembly System

Abstract

Expanding global markets are constantly changing and unstable. South African manufacturing companies need to develop similar levels of sophistication and expertise in the automation industry as its international rivals, to compete for these markets and meet rising consumer expectations. To remain competitive, these manufacturing companies must manage their plants extremely efficiently to ensure the quality of assembled products; allow for rapid product introduction and product changes; achieve shortened throughput cycles; ensure more reliable delivery dates; and effectively coordinate product demand while contending with decreased product lifespans. To accomplish this, manufacturing companies in SA are progressively engaging in the current trend in automation known as reconfigurable manufacturing. Due to the extreme flexibility of these reconfigurable systems, the monitor and control systems for these require the same levels of flexibility. The purpose of the study is to develop a hybrid control and monitoring system, to supervise and control reconfigurable assembly systems (RAS), and adapt to the flexibility of these systems. To achieve this, a literature study was done in the research area to reveal the prerequisites for such systems; the physical assembly devices were designed and built; the separate software modules developed and ultimately integrated into the intended system. The tests to validate the system were developed in such a way that each subsection of the system is validated by using a different system software function. This inevitably confirms the functionality of the fundamental components and the system in entirety. The results indicated that devices are easily added to the system; devices are successfully detected and identified; how the system plans production, and how the system automatically configures itself. Further results showed the capability of the system to generate and virtually wire system runtime code; store and retrieve production data; as well as warn and alarm on unwanted conditions. By obtaining these results, companies can configure their systems with ease, in a shorter amount of time, and without any human error. Moreover, their systems will be more flexible, allow easy addition of new products and assembly devices, and with minimal downtime. This will enable SA manufacturing companies to be more competitive, ensure increased productivity, achieve extreme system flexibility, and decrease lead times – thus ensuring them an advantage over their international competitors.