Using Grafcet to design generic controllers

Ways in which Grafcet is being used to help design generic controllers within the US National Bureau of Standards´ Automated Manufacturing Research Facility are outlined. Grafcet is a powerful graphic language for expressing control flow and allows the expression of both parallel and sequential control logic. The rationale is described for using Grafcet as a design tool for expressing software for a generic controller. Grafcet helps the designer determine: modularization of the code, functions that can be performed in parallel, communication between parallel processes, and problems in control flow