Abstract
In factory automation systems, it is strongly desired to provide highly flexible control software because of frequent system modification. However, short term development and modification of control software is difficult for traditional control software which is developed by using procedural general purpose programming languages.
Recently, konwledge engineering methods which can describe control logics directly and in non-procedural manner have been applied to many fields. However, few applications have been put to practical use. Furthermore, very little is reported about these implementation.
We have applied the knowledge engineering method to real time control of billet conditioning line in steel works.
The paper presented rule based control system applied to billet conditioning line and its evaluation. First, the software configuration in which high flexibility, high response and easy interface to plant were considered, is presented. Next, the practical method for checking consistency of control logic is presented. Finally, evaluation results about the application are presented. Based on real data, it is presented that control software is developed step by step and easily modified. As the results, control software development man power were reduced to 1/3 compared with traditional methods. Additionally, useful know-how such as the ratio of inference time for response time (about 20%), software construction method of rule based control system with which control logics can be modified only by data modification are presented.
