Annals of the CIRP Vol. 56/1/2007 -459- doi:10.1016/j.cirp.2007.05.

110
Figure 1 - Current CAx manufacturing chain
Universal Manufacturing Platform for CNC Machining
S.T. Newman
1
, A. Nassehi
1
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
Submitted by A. N. Bramley(1), Bath, United Kingdom
Abstract
Today, CNC technology is a major contributor to the production capacity of industrial companies. The
current NC standards only allow rudimentary low-bandwidth information transfer between various resources.
A complex network of post-processors is therefore needed for the basic functionality of CAD/CAM/CNC
systems. In this paper, the authors investigate and design a universal platform for supporting CNC
manufacturing. The platform shifts the necessary knowledge transformations from the vendor specific
software domain to the conceptual model space. This will eliminate the requirement for postprocessors.
Consequently, resources will be interchangeable and interoperable, adding to the strategic agility of the
manufacturing network.
Keywords
Computer Aided Manufacturing, Integration, Interoperability
1 INTRODUCTION
CNC manufacturing has evolved from the automated
machine tools of the 1960s to the modern multi-process
multi-axis machining centres. In parallel to the advances
in hardware design, the programming requirements of the
machines have increased in complexity and a plethora of
computer aided systems collectively known as CAx are
now utilised to manufacture extremely complex
components on the machines.
More than 70% of manufacturing businesses in the UK
and the US rely on CNC machines as a part of their
production capacity [1]. Considering todays markets
volatile nature, it is imperative for a manufacturing
enterprise to have a long-term flexibility plan and thus
strategic agility [2] is fundamental for such an enterprise
to survive. Resource fluidity, the ability of a company to
redeploy its resources to rapidly meet the market
requirements rapidly, is a major contributor to strategic
agility.
The advances in CNC manufacturing have resulted in
many developments in a wide variety of related
technologies and systems. As vendors have tried to
protect their market share by using proprietary standards,
many software systems in use today within the domain of
CAx supported manufacturing are unable to seamlessly
exchange information with others [3].
The result is isolated islands of automation that severely
reduce the resource fluidity of a manufacturing company
[4]. In order to exchange information between these
islands, it is common to utilise postprocessors. In this
paper the authors provide a vision for a universal
manufacturing platform that enables seamless information
transfer between various CAx systems. The platform
achieves this by replacing the syntax based
postprocessors with knowledge transformations within an
ISO standards supported concept based data warehouse.
In this paper, the state-of-the-art in manufacturing
interoperability has been used to identify the requirements
of the platform. These requirements are then utilised to
design the framework for the platform together with the
necessary components. Finally a practical example is
used to demonstrate the functionality of the platform in a
dynamic manufacturing scenario.
2 STATE-OF-THE-ART IN INTEROPERABLE CNC
MANUFACTURING
The most common CAx chain used in manufacturing
today is illustrated in Figure 1. The part design is
transferred into a computer aided design (CAD) system
where geometric information about the component is
stored in the form of a CAD file.
This file is then transferred to a computer aided process
planning (CAPP) [5] or a computer aided manufacturing
(CAM) system where the user adds the process
information to the geometry. The added information
typically includes tool definitions, feeds, speeds and
machining strategies. This data is stored with a
proprietary format in a CAM file.
A postprocessor is utilised to transform the information
from the product space in CAM to the machine space in
the CNC. The resulting file is transferred to the controller
and is used to machine the component.
As a postprocessor is a unidirectional translator, the
integrity of the information transferred to the machine will
be compromised as soon as any modifications are made
in the data at the controller on the shop floor.
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The CNC manufacturer Mazak was among the first to
address this problem by introducing CAMWare, A unified
approach to the CAx chain where both offline and
shopfloor systems utilised the same interface to interact
with the user [6]. In the CAMWare system the information
transfer is handled in a high-level feature based manner.
In an attempt to standardise the syntax for all CAD
system the initial graphics exchange specification (IGES)
was developed with the support of the US department of
defense. This effort was later followed with the
ongoing development of the standard for the exchange of
product data model (STEP) [7]. The standard has been
extended to the domain of CAM and CNC with the
development of STEP-NC, formalised in ISO10303-238
and ISO14649 [8, 9].
These standards aim to unify all CAx systems in using the
same syntax to store and exchange information. STEP-
NC provides a hierarchical data model to support various
manufacturing technologies such as milling or turning
machines [10].
While the standards provide a comprehensive data model
to represent product and process data, unless a specific
CAx tool complies with the standards interoperability
cannot be achieved.
Figure 2 represents the evolution of the current CAx chain
into an interoperable CAx network. In the current chain,
information is transferred using postprocessors and
translators in a unidirectional manner to the next system
along the chain. In an interoperable manufacturing
network each CAx system should be capable of
seamlessly exchanging information with any other CAx
system.
Such levels of interoperability are achievable through the
use of STEP-NC, only if all CAx vendors make the effort
to implement the standard in their products [11, 12].
However, the commercial attention to STEP-NC has been
limited and as such most of the standards potential for
interoperability remains untapped.
The authors propose a novel approach in development of
a universal manufacturing platform that utilises the STEP-
NC standards excellent data models and accentuates it
with the functionality of mobile agents and manufacturing
knowledgebases.
3 A UNIVERSAL MANUFACTURING PLATFORM TO
SUPPORT INTEROPERABILITY
A platform is commonly defined as a software and
hardware standard that supports a variety of applications
by enabling them to exchange standardised information
through a communication system without knowing the
particulars of the destination application.
An operating system, for example, provides a software
application with the ability to access computer hardware
and other software applications information in an abstract
format. The software application therefore does not need
to have information about the resources it utilises and the
operating system handles the data transactions.
Figure 3 illustrates the vision for a universal
manufacturing platform where various CAx applications
can seamlessly exchange information. In addition to the
CAD, CAM, CAPP and CNC interfaces, business
applications such as ERP, scheduling and costing can
also exchange information with the various systems. This
will allow such systems to link business information to the
underlying manufacturing data and resources. The
detailed information available at this level can be utilised
to develop decision support systems.
In order to achieve this level of interoperability, the
platform requires abstraction of resources, encoding
relevant knowledge in a standardised manner [13] and
communication infrastructure to transfer data from one
application to another.
3.1 Standard representation of manufacturing
knowledge
As mentioned above, the STEP-NC standard provides a
hierarchical data model to store product and process
information. The standard is therefore utilised as the basis
for the representation of manufacturing knowledge
contained within the platform.
While STEP-NC encourages the use of features in
describing components, it is not limited to such
representations and can be used to represent process
data in the form of toolpaths and even low-level
machining instructions. It can therefore provide an
appropriate foundation for a comprehensive lexicon for
CNC manufacturing concepts.
The standard however, does not provide a
comprehensive resource model. It is therefore impossible
to represent a machinig workstation on a functional level
with the current version of STEP-NC. Similarly capabilities
of a CAM system or a CAD package can not be modelled
within the STEP-NC schema. An XML based structure to
represent resources has therefore been developed to
support encoding of the various CAx system capabilities.
The open approach used in the development of the XML
resource schema will allow it to be modified to comply
with the new standards currently being developed for
resource representation.
CAD
Part
design CAM
CAD
Part
design
CAM
CAD
CAM
CNC
CNC
CNC
CNC
Physical
Production
Bidirectional
Information Transfer
Unidirectional
Information Transfer
Figure 2 - An interoperable CAx network
CAD
Interface
CAM
Interface
Universal
Manufacturing
Platform
CNC
Interface
Costing
Interface
ERP
Interface
Scheduling
Interface
CAPP
Interface
Other
Interface
Figure 3 - Universal manufacturing platform
i
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3.2 Abstraction of manufacturing resources
The platform provides an abstract interface for CAx
systems by relying on the resource models. With this
approach the representation utilised by the specific
software is translated into the corresponding standard
representation. As the translation occurs within the same
context, the integrity of the information is maintained [14].
It is therefore possible to translate information in a
bidirectional manner.
3.3 Communication facilities
Many communication systems such as web based
structures can be used to enable various CAx systems to
exchange information with the platform. Mobile agents in
particular allow the platform to function in a geographically
distributed domain [15, 16]. Each individual CAx system
can reside on a remote host with a mobile agent residing
on that host to exchange messages with the platform.
A mobile agent based solution has therefore been
developed to allow information exchange among the
various connected CAx systems.
4 ARCHITECTURE OF THE UNIVERSAL
MANUFACTURING PLATFORM
The overall architecture of the universal manufacturing
platform is illustrated in Figure 4.
The platform stores standardised manufacturing
information in a manufacturing data warehouse. This data
warehouse utilises the data model provided by STEP-NC
augmented with the XML schema for resource
representation to provide a comprehensive manufacturing
model. An example of this model is shown in Figure 5
where the process model, the product model and the
resource model are linked to a manufacturing execution
model. The execution model contains the resource
specific instructions with the appropriate syntax.
The execution model represented in Figure 5 is for
machining of a feature based component and contains
the necessary NC instructions that can be executed on a
CNC controller.
The manufacturing knowledgebase contains conceptual
transformations for exchanging information from one CAx
domain to another. The knowledgebase for example
contains the necessary transformations required to
convert a high-level feature based rectangular pocket
machining instruction into a series of tool movements.
The intercommunication bus provides a mobile-agent
based messaging system that enables the various CAx
systems to communicate with each other as well as the
manufacturing knowledgebase and the manufacturing
data warehouse.
CAx interfaces contain a subset of the knowledge
represented in the manufacturing knowledgebase and
utilise it to interpret the messages received from various
CAx systems. The application interfaces are mobile
agents monitoring the CAx systems to communicate with
the platform when necessary.
With this architecture all knowledge transformation occurs
in the standard domain of the data warehouse. Any
transformation from one subset of manufacturing
concepts to another can therefore be applied to any
resource that represents the same subset of the
concepts.
5 FEATURE BASED DEMONSTRATION
A basic prototype of the manufacturing platform has been
implemented using the Java language and the Aglets
mobile agent framework to demonstrate the functionality
of the concept. A test component based on industrial
parts has been utilised in a dynamic manufacturing
scenario to compare the traditional approach and the
universal manufacturing platform.
The current prototype of the platform support feature
based product information and has interfaces for feature
based shopfloor programming systems from Heidenhain
and Siemens as well as the capability to communicate
with FeatureCAM, a feature based CAM solution from
Delcam.
To illustrate the functionality of the platform, the following
manufacturing scenario will be utilised: An existing part
will be modified on the shopfloor to create a new
component. The new component will then be visualised in
a CAM system and finally the updated part will be
manufactured on two CNC machines with different
controllers.
In the current approach, the part design will be modified
on the shopfloor. The modified design will then be entered
into the CAD system by an operator. Part information will
then be transferred to the CAM system where the
engineer assigns toolpaths and tooling information for the
two machines independently. The program will then
Resource Model Product Model
Product
Model
Tolerances Feature Workingstep
Workplan
Process Model
M/T F WS M/T F WS M/T F WS
Process Execution Model
Operation 1 Operation 2 Operation 3
Machine
Configuration
Machine
Model
Tool
Model
Figure 5 An example of the manufacturing model in the
manufacturing data warehouse
Business Application Interface CAD Interface CAM Interface CNC Interface
Universal Manufacturing Platform
CAD
App.
Interface
CAD
System 1
CAD
System 2
CAM
System 1
CAM
System 2
CNC
Machine 1
CNC
Machine 2
ERP
System
SCM
System
Other
System
Intercommunication Bus
Manufacturing Data Warehouse Manufacturing Knowledgebase
CAD
App.
Interface
CAM
App.
Interface
CAM
App.
Interface
CNC
App.
Interface
CNC
App.
Interface
ERP
App.
Interface
SCM
App.
Interface
Auxiliary
App.
Interface
Figure 4 - Universal manufacturing platform architecture
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passed through a different postprocessor for each
machine and the generated NC
files will be used for machining on the two CNCs.
Figure 6 shows the universal manufacturing platform
approach. Here the feature based design is modified
using a shopfloor programming system. The mobile agent
monitoring the programming system relays the changes
to the platform and the corresponding information in the
data warehouse is updated.
The feature based CAM system utilises the updated
information to generate an updated visual model of the
component. The manufacturing strategy attached to the
previous version of the component remains intact and
with the approval of the engineer is applied to the updated
component. The CAM interface agent updates the data
warehouse accordingly.
Both CNC controllers can then access the manufacturing
information in the data warehouse through their
respective interface agents. The required syntax for
feature based NC code is generated in the interface
based on the resource model for each machine and the
standardised information contained within the data
warehouse. The code is then executed on each controller
and component is manufactured. This cycle can continue
with the modification of component on any of the two
machines.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper the authors introduce the novel concept of a
universal manufacturing platform to support CNC
manufacturing. The overall architecture of the platform
and the supporting data models together with a prototype
implementation is presented.
The prototype implementation demonstrates the
functionality of the platform in eliminating the need for
vendor specific information transformation. While the
current prototype is limited in the scope of
transformations, it can be extended to support additional
manufacturing processes, CAD/CAM systems and non
feature based component definitions.
A standardised approach for representation of
manufacturing resource capabilities is also imperative
for the full implementation of a comprehensive
manufacturing platform.
The proposed platform complements the STEP-NC
standard by extending its data models to support non
STEP-NC compliant manufacturing systems. It can
therefore be utilised to increase the commercial appeal of
STEP-NC.
The Feature based demonstration highlights the possible
performance gains and resource savings of zero time
manufacturing information changeover that can be
achieved by migrating from postprocessors to a
standardised knowledge based platform.
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Figure 6 - Feature based test component manufacture
using the universal manufacturing platform
Universal
Manufacturing
Platform