TFB 54:  Interactive Configurable Online-Scheduling for Autonomous Production Cells

• Subject Area: Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
• Term: from 2005 to 2008
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5486296

Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) allow the economic production of goods even by very small order and batch sizes with low labour demand and highly qualitative output. The processing of orders differing from each other with respect to what and how much to produce depends thereby heavily on the availability of machines and auxiliary devices. A challenge is the optimisation of the working sequences on all work stations in order to achieve such goals as the highest possible workload and the shortest possible cycle times and to satisfy given due dates and priorities of orders. However, in real workshop environments planned values differ from the actual values considerably. This is due to the fact that manual planning and scheduling methods are still being used by many small and medium enterprises, as well as to the high complexity of scheduling scenarios, which overstrain operators on the shop floor and thus lead to insufficient scheduling results. Alternatively used software solutions are not fully integrated with the manufacturing control systems and do not consider some important technological constraints of given FMS. Both approaches result in an insufficient utilisation of the economic potentials of FMS.This project aims at developing an adaptive online-scheduling system with an interactive user-interface. The main focus lies in the development of the configurable planning and scheduling algorithm, which can be integrated into various manufacturing control systems and can be adapted to various physical FMS. A high adherence of planned to actual values is being aimed for in order to maximise the performance of FMS, which can be only achieved if technological constraints will be realistically considered. The partial goals comprise the formalisation of the problem, interfacing and integration of the scheduling module with existing manufacturing control systems and optimisation of the scheduling-algorithm with respect to the quality of results and its run-time performance.This project is based on the results which were achieved within the Collaborative Research Centre 368 Autonomous Production Cells (APZ) in the field of planning and scheduling. It aims at their transfer to industrial Flexible Manufacturing Systems, by taking further practical requirements into consideration.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transfer Units

Completed projects

• T01 - Interaktive konfigurierbare Online-Feinplanung für Autonome Produktionszellen in der Industrie (Project Head Brecher, Christian )
• T02 - Einschweißtiefenregelung für das Schweißen mit Laserstrahlung (Project Heads Abel, Dirk ;  Poprawe, Reinhart )
• T03 - Hochgenauer pneumatischer Schreitantrieb (Project Head Murrenhoff, Hubertus )
• T06 - Intelligenter Messerkopf (Project Head Klocke, Fritz )

• Applicant Institution: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr.-Ing. Robert Schmitt