Variable structure control of a line of manufacturing machines*

In this paper a control method is introduced for a line of manufacturing machines based on the variable structure control. First the flow model of one manufacturing machine with variable structure control is presented where the uniform ultimate boundedness of the tracking error trajectories is proven. Then, the flow model of a manufacturing line with variable structure control is presented where the necessary conditions are derived in order to guaranty the uniform ultimate boundedness of the tracking error trajectories of each machine. Performance and robustness issues of the closed-loop flow models are illustrated in numerical simulations.