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Incorporating Component-Based Control Software In Manufacturing Engineering Instruction Yu T. Morton, Douglas A. Troy, George A. Pizza, Osama Ettouney

Miami University, Oxford, OH.

Abstract

Efficient and timely development of control software is a challenge in deploying agile manufacturing systems. This is also a challenge in the academic environment because control software used in student projects must be developed quickly and efficiently. Instructors and students are required to have sufficient programming and software development background to change or modify a piece of control software. This introduces tedious programming tasks into a project and diverts students’ focus on issues fundamental to manufacturing systems and processes. A component-based software development approach has been developed and utilized at Miami University that introduces flexible, adaptable, and user-friendly control software for manufacturing work cells. This paper presents the design framework and implementation of the software, as well as preliminary instructional results using the software.

Introduction

Modern manufacturing systems must be flexible, dynamic, and adaptive to meet the market demand 1. Manufacturing engineering education must adopt new technology and new approaches to address the new challenges. A major problem facing manufacturing engineering education in addressing the problem is the inflexible and programming intensive nature of the control software. This paper addresses our approaches in an attempt to solve this problem by using software components to construct flexible and adaptive manufacturing control software.

Component-Based Software

Component-based software development is a recent approach in software engineering. In the component-based software paradigm, software systems are built with prefabricated software components2. These software components are well-defined precompiled building blocks with standardized interfaces and are well separated from their own development environment and from other components. A third party with no knowledge of a component’s internal design and implementation can construct complex software systems by assembling software components through the use of visual design tools. Such characteristics make the component-based architecture an excellent choice for developing flexible control software for manufacturing systems3,4,5. Using the component-based approach, a set of generic software components can be created and stored in a component library. The desired system can be assembled using appropriately configured software components. Simulated components can be used in place of “real” components for testing and planning purposes. When changes occur in system

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ã2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Morton, Y., & Gassert, J., & Troy, D., & Ettouney, O. (2002, June), Incorporating Component Based Control Software In Manufacturing Engineering Instruction Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--11159