A cloud-based manufacturing control system with data integration from multiple autonomous agents

The paper describes a semi-heterarchical manufacturing control solution based on a private cloud infrastructure which collects data in real-time from intelligent devices associated to shop-floor entities. The entities consist of industrial resources and mobile devices embedding the work in process on products during their manufacturing cycle. The proposed control system is developed using a common database in the cloud which handles operation synchronization and production control logic. The database component tables and the update processes are described in the article. The main functionalities of the control system are: manufacturing system configuration, control, monitoring, and optimization, and storage of historic data. An implementation framework and experimental results for the evaluation of consumed energy are reported.