Applied Supervisory Control for a Flexible Manufacturing System

This paper presents a case study in the design and implementation of a discrete event system (DES) of real-world complexity. Our DES plant is a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) laboratory model that consists of 29 interacting components and is controlled via 107 digital signals. Regarding controller design, we apply a hierarchical and decentralised synthesis method from earlier work in order to achieve nonblocking and safe closed-loop behaviour. Regarding implementation, we discuss how digital signals translate to discrete events from a practical point of view, including timing issues. The paper demonstrates how both, design and implementation, are supported by the open-source software tool libFAUDES.