Sistema Flessibile per la Gestione di Catene di Produzione

Abstract Along production pipelines in manufactory industries several elaboration phases in which the movement of interpolated axes are present. These activities have to be synchronized with several other simpler activities along the pipeline. Computerized numerical controls for such systems have to be flexible and strongly expandable and reusable since pipelines are frequently reconfigured to realize differently arranged pipelines with different technical requirements. In this paper, the assessment of such a flexible architecture is presented on the basis of which the building of flexible distributed controls for pipelines is possible. The architecture has been defined in the ESPRIT HPCN (High Performance Computer Networking) project MUPAAC (Multi Processor Architecture for Automatic Control). MUPAAC architecture and prototype has been assessed in order to identify the most important performance indexes. Keywords: numerical control, distributed control, performance evaluation, systems assessment, CNC, PCI, communication, CANBUS, fieldbus. The experience of reengineering a Computerized Numerical Control, CNC, is presented. In the reengineering, several new functionalities and the upgrading towards the object-oriented were included. The reengineering process was maintained under control in order to complete the process within the deadline with success. Some technical and economical lessons learned that can be useful for helping the readers in solving similar problems are discussed.