A flexible software architecture for agile manufacturing

The flexibility required of an agile manufacturing system must be achieved largely through computer software. The system's control software must be adaptable to new products and to new system components without becoming unreliable or difficult to maintain. This requires designing the software specifically to facilitate future changes. As part of the Agile Manufacturing Project at Case Western Reserve University, we have developed a software architecture for control of an agile manufacturing workcell, and we have demonstrated its flexibility with rapid changeover and introduction of new products. In this paper, we describe the requirements for agile manufacturing software and how our software architecture addresses them.