Partners VOLVO AERO CORPORATION AB HOGSKOLAN VAST CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLA AB AVIO S.P.A MTU AERO ENGINES GMBH BCT STEUERUNGS UND DV-SYSTEME GMBH SKYTEK LTD ROLLS ROYCE PLC THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM WYTWORNIA SPRZETU KOMUNIKACYJNEGO PZL - RZESZOW SA UNIVERSITA DI PISA ZENON S.A. ROBOTICS AND INFORMATICS THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD MILTECH CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY Place your organisation’s logo here if appropriate.
Project Background Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) were developed to provide flexibility. In many cases these installations have been very successful; however in some cases the flexibility has been very low when introducing new parts into existing cells. The FLEXA project aims to address these issues through the development of adaptive methodologies for automation that support highly flexible manufacturing systems capable of producing high quality traceable parts.
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Project Background The FLEXA project approaches the problem from a number of different angles these are: •System architecture and design •Knowledge engineering •Virtual verification and quality assurance •Cell integration •Human interaction and restart.
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What is a truly flexible automation cell? • We should be able to manufacture\ process any part that we have the resources to support • The process should be rapid and efficient • We should be able to add or remove resources at any time • Reconfiguration should not affect existing processes
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How Can We Realise This? Processes and operations are developed as recipes The recipe can contain: •Resource requirements •Virtual PLC Logic •NC\Robot Programmes •Hard PLC Logic •... The Cell configures and runs using these recipes They can change in real time Place your organisation’s logo here if appropriate.
FCC will take recipe from FLEXA Database, schedule and deploy on scheduled resources Soft PLC will control the resources FCC also maintains its own log / activity database for tracking purposes External Systems will coordinate with FCC via web services
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Data Management System beta tested using milling operation FCC software design complete Resource web services complete and tested Demonstrator cell under construction at Volvo Aero
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