The Origin of Operations: Interactions Between the Product and the Manufacturing Automation Control System

This paper investigates the interaction and relationship between the product design and the control logic design for manufacturing automation system. One important challenge during the development of a manufacturing automation system, is to handle the information related to the manufacturing control system (i.e PLC), since it influences almost every part of the manufacturing design and process. Therefore it is crucial to know when and how this information is created, to be able to increase the development quality and efficiency. This is especially true for the product related information that impacts the design of the control system. This paper studies the liaisons, the interfaces among parts and features in the product design, and its relationship with operations and resources in the manufacturing system. These liaisons must be considered in both product and manufacturing development since the inter-relation between liaisons and operations establishes the direct mapping of constraints and demands between the two domains. This paper further proposes how the manufacturing operations can be described during the development and how they are realized by resources in the manufacturing system. An example from automotive industry is included in this paper, to demonstrate the proposed concept.