APPLICATION OF IMPROVED PRODUCTION ACTIVITY CONTROL ARCHITECTURE FOR SHOP FLOOR INFORMATION SYSTEM IN DIGITAL MANUFACTURING

Shop floor control (SFC) is responsible for the coordination and control of the manufacturing physical and information flow within the shop floor in the manufacturing system. Weaknesses of the production activity control (PAC) architecture of the shop floor are addressed by the Maglica's new system architecture. This architecture gives rise to unlimited number of movers and producers thus evolving more complex but decentralized architecture. Beijing Institute of Technology - production activity control (BIT-PAC) architecture introduces an idea of sub-producers and sub-movers thus reducing the complexity of the architecture. All the equipments including sub-producers and sub-movers are considered to be passive in the proposed shop floor information system. The dissemination of information from sub-producers and sub-movers is done manually through a PC. Proposed BIT-PAC SFC architecture facilitates the information flow from shop floor to the other area of the organization. Effective use of internet information services (IIS) and SQL2000 is done along with the ASP.NET technology to implement the application logic. Applicability of the software based on BIT-PAC architecture is checked by running application software on a network PC that supports the dynamic flow of information from sub-producers and sub-movers to the other parts of the organization. Use of software is also shown at the end for BIT training workshop thus supporting the use of SFC architecture for similar kind of environments.