Opc-based Manufacturing Systems, Reconfigurable Control Technology

With more and more aggressive competition on a global scale, Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) characterized by customized flexibility, rapid integration of new functions and new process technologies into exiting systems and the agility of rapidly adapting the changing market have caught many manufacturing vendors' attention. The reconfigurablity of RMS' control system is the key technology in the reconfiguring of RMS, which relates to the agility of reconfiguration and reconfiguring cost. So the study of reconfigurable control system is significant.At first, this paper presents the basic concepts and characters of RMS. Then it discusses the reconfigurability of RMS' control system at aspects of device controller, control net and supervisory software and the important impact of OPC (OLE for Process Control) on reconfigurability of RMS' control system. It also presents the supervisory software frame based on OPC technology. Based on the above research, this paper also introduces the development of a reconfigurable supervisory software based on OPC technology including the OOPN modeling of resource of RMS, design methods of resource control, the frame of each subsystem and their implement methods. Next, this paper presents the verification of the software with the MPS in the CIMS Center of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the compare results also are given.At last, this paper summarizes the research work and raises some new hypotheses for deep researches.