Status monitoring and error recovery in flexible manufacturing systems

The automated manufacturing systems of the future can only be feasible if they have capabilities to recover automatically from faults and errors effectively and efficiently. Reports on the work carried out looking at error recovery problems in manufacturing cell controllers. Cell control systems also invariably manage and schedule work in an automated cell as well as carrying out the general tasks of communications, sequencing and recording. Presents a model for error recovery capability which uses system information, data and prior knowledge of errors to recover from system errors. Elucidates the structure and operation of the cell controller developed. Work so far has shown promise in achieving automatic recovery capability in cell control systems. Finally identifies further developments for future work.