HIERARCHICAL AND INTELLIGENT CONTROL OF FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

A three levels' hierarchical and intelligent control framework of Flexible Manufacturing System is discussed in this paper. The higher two levels are a hybrid (analytical/knowledge based) scheduler which is constructed by integrating an real-time expert scheduling system and Kimemia and Gershwin's short term hierarchical scheduling algorithm. The bottom level is a Petri net-based supervisory controller . The discussion concentrates on the system modelling of each level and integration among levels.