Object oriented design and distributed control for CIM

The specific problems found during the development of integrated manufacturing system components are discussed, and some principles for their design are presented. The object-oriented approach, which has the qualities of simplification and abstraction necessary for large reusable manufacturing systems, is considered. The method´s advantages for overall system-structure design and basic software component development are highlighted. The case of a numerical-control programming module is taken as an example. Also presented is a flexible workshop simulator that drives a computerized workshop scale model whose main objective is the modeling of distributed flexible manufacturing-control systems