Separation of concerns on the orchestration of operations in flexible manufacturing

Abstract

Purpose

The growing complexity of industrial robot work‐cells calls for the use of advanced orchestration techniques to promote flexibility and reusability. This paper aims to present a solution based on service‐oriented platforms that endorses the separation of concerns, coordination and execution.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper starts with the evaluation of available tools for the orchestration and service generation. Endorsing the missing features depicted in that evaluation, the paper describes developments of concepts and software and the evaluation made.

Findings

From the early evaluations made in this paper, the SCXML‐based purposed language is more adapted to the industrial robotic cell scenario than existing alternatives. The generation of services allow the integration without knowledge from any programming language.

Practical implications

This approach's main drawback, as described by some users, was the lack of some programming features: simple math operations and conditional statements.

Originality/value

This paper fulfils two partially unsolved problems: adequate languages for orchestration of service oriented on the device level and purposes techniques for the specification of services using robot programming languages.

Citation

Veiga, G., Malaca, P., Norberto Pires, J. and Nilsson, K. (2012), "Separation of concerns on the orchestration of operations in flexible manufacturing", Assembly Automation, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 38-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/01445151211198700