Prerequisites for real-time control of manufacturing systems

Paper in proceeding, 2008

Real-time control of manufacturing systems is the dream of industrial management, and it is also a scientific field that has drawn a lot attention from researchers around the world. Much effort has been spent on developing new algorithms for intelligent control of manufacturing systems, but very little of this has been implemented in scheduling software. Furthermore, of the algorithms that have been implemented, very little is of actual use in industrial practice. The reason for this is not that there is something wrong with the scheduling algorithms, but the fact that the prerequisites for their use are not present. One very important prerequisite is to report real-time status of the different parts in the manufacturing system. An even more important prerequisite is to have a management system and overall control system that can handle the information and achieve real-time control. Cybernetics and specifically Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM) provide a mean to evaluate whether the existing or a planned organisation and management system can control the manufacturing system in real-time or not. Conclusions about the industrial practice are based on the PPA studies.