Seamless design methodology of manufacturing cell-control software based on activity-control-condition and object diagram

A manufacturing cell must be changed according to the type, variations and intended rate of production for the product. In order to shorten the period of time required for the cell-control software development, the system designer must have the descriptions of the configuration of the cell and the sequence of activities required in the cell, and a comprehensive design methodology based on these descriptions. First, we propose a seamless design methodology that is comprehensive and has a clear design concept. The methodology is based on the diagrammatic specification and the conversion processes of it. The diagrammatic specification represents both the configuration of the cell and the sequence of activities required in the cell; what kind of devices exist in the cell and how they are connected with each other, and how they should work in order to complete the task. The methodology specifies the step-by-step conversion processes from the initial diagrammatic specification to the cell-control software code. The conversion is divided into three processes: refinement of the device activities, translation of the device activities into the cell-controller activities, and transformation from the cell-controller activities to the cell-control software code. Secondly, as the diagrammatic specification, we propose an object diagram and an Activity-Control-Condition (ACC) diagram. The object diagram represents a set of objects and the links among them. The ACC diagram represents the sequence of activities required in the cell as three constructs: the state transitions of objects involved in each activity, the control logic among activities and the conditions for the control. Thirdly, we show the diagram editor how to help the system designer carry out the processes in the design methodology. The system designer can use the following functions of the diagram editor: modifying, saving and loading the object diagram and ACC diagram, and generating the cellcontrol software code from the translated ACC diagram. Finally, we show the implementation method of the cellcontrol software, and we verify the functionality of the software by comparing it with the sequence of activities in the ACC diagram.