DCOM and MMS–based control software architecture for automated manufacturing system

In this paper, we introduce the manufacturing message specification (MMS) and compare two distributed object approaches–distributed component object model (DCOM) and common object request broker architecture (CORBA), suggest characteristics that DCOM is more suitable for automated manufacturing system (AMS) control software integration. In order to make a control system provided with interoperability and reconfigurability etc., a hybrid control system is built for AMS, then a control software architecture is presented for AMS based on distributed object DCOM middleware and MMS standard. The object-oriented DCOM communication protocol is used to implement the MMS in a distributed object mode. DCOM and MMS combination brings the operating system independent communication capabilities to manufacturing devices such as CNC machine tools and industrial robots in AMS. Control software implementation of MMS concepts in the DCOM environment is particularly discussed. Finally, to verify the control software architecture for AMS, prototype development has been implemented in VC++ 6.0 developer environments.