A Study on Autonomous Layout Creation Function for Square-Arrayed Machining Cell System (1st Report)

—Layout Creation Function in Planning Stages—

Abstract

Market trends are rapidly changing, and timely decisions are becoming more crucial and difficult than ever for manufacturing industries. We proposed a manufacturing system named Square-Arrayed Machining Cell System (SAMS) as a feasible and promising system towards this goal. SAMS is aimed to have an autonomous layout ability, which does not need a specific or absolute outside signal indicating changes in the manufacturing circumstances to reconfigure itself. In this paper, we focus on the methodology to facilitate an autonomous layout function in its planning state that realises the specialization and generalization in SAMS, and propose a layout creation function for the SAMS. The characteristics and effectiveness of the proposed methodology are investigated by computer simulation using a model manufacturing system.