An Object-Oriented Approach to Developing a Virtual Manufacturing System Model

Recently, virtual manufacturing has emerged as an important conceptin the development of manufacturing systems. To implement a virtual manufacturingsystem, it is necessary to construct digital models for all physicaland logical elements of the real manufacturing system. In this research, anefficient and systematic methodology for creating an object-oriented virtualmanufacturing system model is proposed. The proposed approach for developinga virtual manufacturing system includes four stages: (1) functionalanalysis, (2) behavior analysis, (3) virtual system model construction and (4)virtual system implementation. IDEF0 and object-oriented petri net (OPN)are integrated into the corresponding stages based on their characteristics.In addition, the concept of a virtual device is proposed as a reference modelfor constructing the virtual manufacturing system model. In order to developthe system rapidly and efficiently, transformation rules between the IDEF0and OPN and between the OPN and the virtual device are constructed.Finally, an assembly and packaging system is produced to illustrate the proposedapproach for developing a virtual manufacturing system model.