INTELLIGENT REACTIVE SYSTEM FOR SUPERVISING DISTRIBUTED PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT : The problem of integration in CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) is often viewed as nothing else a problem of data sharing between activities. This is also a problem of cooperation and synchronisation between activities, and this problem of efficient and “intelligent” communication between activities is, in fact, the main problem. We have chosen to deal with the integration problem of production management activities. This coordination should be the responsibility of a specific system : A Manufacturing Management Monitoring System (3M-System). Such a supervision system should not only be able to react to changes in the environment with reflexive replies. It should also be capable of reasoning and of chosing among the actions it can undertake, according to the time constraints the system is faced with. We propose an architecture in which the supervision task is distributed at the level of “islands” of Production Management Activities under the form of Softwares called Unit-Controllers. All the Unit-Controllers together make up the 3M-System. Each Unit-Controller is a Knowledge-Based Real-Time System using a blackboard mechanism and dialogues with the other Unit-Controllers. It is obtained by instantiation of a generic Unit-controller Shell.