IMDC: an integrated environment for the design and control of manufacturing machines

This paper outlines a new approach to machine lifecycle support, an “Integrated Machine Design and Control (IMDC)” environment, aimed at overcoming these problems. The IMDC environment has the potential to radically improve the effectiveness of machine and associated control system design/build and to enable efficient modification as requirements change. It also allows the integration of design and control system elements from a wide range of vendors. From a user´s perspective, the two main elements of the IMDC environment are: (1) a software toolset and (2) a run-time control architecture. The software toolset covers the life cycle of manufacturing machines and supports the creation of application software for the target control architecture. Underlying these elements is the IMDC system software which integrates and manages the user toolset and links it to the run-time environment. Physically the IMDC environment utilises a network of one or more workstations or personal computers coupled to an embedded real-time control architecture which resides on each target machine. The extendible toolset is composed of machine/control system design, configuration, management tools which can be utilised at various phases of the machine life-cycle. These include application logic description and analysis, machine modelling, automatic code generation and run-time control. IMDC thus seeks to provide a highly integrated environment for system builders, providing much needed support for rapid prototyping, “what-if” analyses and enables machines to be incrementally enhanced. The paper considers the use of example design tools within the toolset and contrasts this new approach with the use of traditional methods. The IMDC run-time architecture (IMDC-RT) provides the basis for an open, structured, device independent method for building machine control systems which is now seeing industrial exploitation. The IMDC project aims to support a physically distributed runtime environment. This enables control systems to be composed of intelligent devices, physically located at the locations in the machine where the control functionality is needed. Profibus has been selected as the main realtime control network although future implementations could be based on other fieldbuses or control network. Other MSI projects are utilising CAN, FIP and Lonworks