Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Agv Controlled Fms, Fergus G. Maughan

The ITB Journal

One of the key factors that prevent the implementation of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) is the elaborate cost associated with the control software. In a FMS there is often a wide range of equipment such as personal computers Programmable Logical Controllers (PLCs), CNC Machines or robots, each of these having their own “intelligence” and library of data. Providing a means of communication between these individual controllers has traditionally been achieved using a Local Area Network (LAN). This proves more expensive when traditional manual operated machines have to be integrated into the system. The model described in this paper provides an …