Flexible and Modular Control and Manufacturing System

The trend in production industry is going away from mass-produced products, towards individual products, which are adapted to the customer requirements. Thus flexible, modular production systems that can be adapted to individual use-cases are necessary. Within this paper, a flexible and modular control for a modular production system with the ability to use manufacturer-independent functions and modules is proposed. A new approach for a standardized description and an open interface for functions and modules is developed. This includes a decentralized control system architecture. The self-configuring control system identifies all functions and modules automatically and a specifically defined memory set (the CIMory data) is used to enable the self-configuration of the control system. Combining a real-time bus system and a SOA-based communication enables the decentralized approach of a future cloud based control system architecture.