CN106293619B

CN106293619B - Equipment control device for MES system

Info

Publication number: CN106293619B
Application number: CN201610670453.4A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 王乐
Original assignee: Suzhou Friend Intelligent Technology Co Ltd
Current assignee: Suzhou Friend Intelligent Technology Co Ltd
Priority date: 2016-08-16
Filing date: 2016-08-16
Publication date: 2020-01-21
Anticipated expiration: 2036-08-16
Also published as: CN106293619A

Abstract

The embodiment of the application provides an equipment control device for an MES system, which is characterized by at least comprising a capacity module and a control module; the capability module is used for reading an operation logic file and a function library sent by the outside; the control module is used for loading and operating the operation logic file and the function library. The MES system control device can read the externally transmitted operation logic file and function library in real time and define the self functions of the MES system control device, so that program developers can customize the function functions in the operation logic file and function library according to needs without pre-curing the functions of the control device in the system.

Description

Equipment control device for MES system

Technical Field

The invention belongs to the field of manufacturing execution systems (MES for short), and particularly relates to an equipment control device for an MES system.

Background

The manufacturing execution system can optimally manage the whole production process from order placement to product completion through information transmission. The system can communicate with an ERP system at the upper end to acquire information and can collect data information of terminal equipment at the tail end to control the operation of the terminal equipment. The existing MES products mainly have the following problems:

poor product protocol portability

Poor portability of product solutions, particularly development code, is a major problem that plagues the development of the MES market. Because the traditional software framework thinking excessively pursues centralized flow monitoring, in the initial design stage of the scheme, developers must fully estimate the processing capacity and the flow possibility of the manufacturing system, so that the dependence of hardware equipment on the system software kernel is too strong, the possibility of system self expansion and product scheme transplantation is limited, and the exertion of the potential processing flexibility of the whole manufacturing system is also fundamentally restricted.

Too strong industrial limitations

Because of the problem of poor portability of the previously mentioned product solutions, almost all MES suppliers today have strong limitations in marketing that are only directed to very specific industries, even to specific types of enterprises within the industry.

Poor openness of the product

The MES market is heavily divided and there is a lack of adoption of common standards in terms of data and schema. Many MES developers even are equipment manufacturers, developed software systems are extremely high in coupling degree with self equipment, poor in integration capability with third-party equipment and software, seriously lack in system openness, and mutually cause and effect with the former two points, so that the development of self products is limited. Even a large software enterprise such as SAP has a certain communication among its own ERP products and MES products, which indicates that the ERP products and the MES products lack global planning design in design and development.

Extremely high development cost

Portability is poor because code re-utilization in its customer scenario is very low, and customized development cannot avoid a large amount of inefficient repetitive work, which directly causes a great investment for developers in MES scenario design, development and implementation.

The traditional centralized framework has poor flexibility (as shown in fig. 1), and also causes insufficient capability of the system to cope with random situations, any change may involve the basic framework and kernel program of the system, not only development is difficult, but also for client enterprises, longer system downtime and test period are meant, and normal production may be directly affected.

Generally speaking, the traditional MES system mostly adopts centralized control, and its control unit is solidified in the system, thus requiring the system to be in the design stage, and the program development designer must fully consider the production process that the whole manufacturing system may adopt and the interface and process characteristics of different equipments, which greatly limits the full exertion of the production capacity of each process equipment and the flexibility of the manufacturing process control.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention aims to provide an equipment control device for an MES system, which is used for reading an external file in real time to define the specific control function of the MES system, so that the dependence degree of the MES system on specific equipment and processes is reduced to the minimum extent, and the cost of secondary development is reduced.

To achieve the above object, an embodiment of the present invention provides an equipment control device for MES system,

the control device at least comprises a capacity module and a control module;

the capability module is used for reading an operation logic file and a function library sent by the outside;

the control module is used for loading and operating the operation logic file and the function library.

Preferably, the run logic file includes variables representing external environment or internal state values, function pointers, and conditional flows of the function of the run pointers;

the control device also comprises a cognitive module used for acquiring and storing the value of the variable;

the control module is used for verifying whether the value according to the variable accords with the condition flow or not, and running the function pointed by the function direction when the value accords with the condition flow.

Preferably, the cognitive module is further configured to store the operation logic file, the device configuration, and the operation log information.

Preferably, the control device further includes a communication module, configured to establish a communication connection and perform data transmission according to a communication protocol.

Preferably, the communication module is configured to transmit first type data according to a UDP protocol, and transmit second type data according to an HTTP protocol, where attributes of the first type data and the second type data are different.

Preferably, the communication module is configured to transmit the data based on an XML format.

Preferably, the capability module is further configured to identify and process a format of the data through the function.

Preferably, the operation logic file is an XML file and/or the function library is a DLL function library.

Preferably, the control module is further configured to manage a thread of the control module and handle an abnormal condition.

Preferably, the capability module further comprises a uniform program interface, and all the customized function inherits the interface.

The invention provides the control device of the MES system, which can read the externally transmitted operation logic file and the function library in real time and define the functions of the control device, so that a program developer can customize the function in the operation logic file and the function library according to the requirement without solidifying the function of the control device in the system in advance.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present application or the technical solutions in the prior art, the drawings needed to be used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art will be briefly described below, it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments described in the present application, and other drawings can be obtained by those skilled in the art without creative efforts.

FIG. 1 is a prior art MES system architecture diagram;

FIG. 2 is a structural view of a control device of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a MES system architecture diagram of the present invention.

Detailed Description

In order to make those skilled in the art better understand the technical solutions in the present application, the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the drawings in the embodiments of the present application, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present application, and not all of the embodiments. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments given herein without making any creative effort, shall fall within the protection scope of the present application.

The invention aims to provide a control device which can read an external operation logic file and a function library in real time so as to realize a function defined by a user, and the control device is applied to an MES (manufacturing execution system) system and used for carrying out data collection and flow monitoring on corresponding production equipment. The control device with the structure can realize the user-defined function, and the functional software does not need to be solidified in the system in advance, thereby improving the flexibility and reducing the cost.

As shown in fig. 2, the control device includes a capability module 12 and a control module 11, which is a specific structure of the control device.

The control module 11 itself runs a control thread of the control apparatus, and is a core module of the control apparatus. Firstly, it contains a main thread, in the starting stage, loading XML format-based operation logic file and DLL function library, then according to real-time environment information and internal information data continuously circularly checking operation logic, any logic relation meeting the condition can activate a branch thread to start one or several function pointed by function library.

In the invention, an operation logic file defined based on an XML format is roughly divided into three components:

variable

A variable represents an external environment or internal state value. For example, if the control device controls a device, it can determine whether the device is connected by the electrical signal of the sensor, and we need to define a boolean variable DeviceConnected to store this data.

Function pointing Function

One of the main features of the control device is to react to the external environment, where the reaction is to run a specific function. The following shows a definition pointing to a function to establish a connection with a device.

Conditional flow Process

Both the environment variable and the function orientation already exist, and the critical condition for running the function needs to be defined. In this example, it is well understood that after the control device has started to complete and the device-related settings have been loaded, the system should initiate a connection request for the device if the device is not connected.

In the present invention, the functions of the control module 11 further include functions of managing its own thread and handling abnormal conditions.

The capability module 12 is used for reading the operation logic file and the function library from the outside and is responsible for managing all the functional functions loaded by the control device. The module provides a uniform program class interface, ICapability, which any custom function class must inherit to ensure that it is automatically recognized and run by the capability module when loaded.

The functional function thread initiated by the control module 11 is finally checked and started by the capability module 12. The same function can be run both in synchronous and asynchronous mode here, depending on different parameter settings in the run logic file.

The operation logic file can adopt an XML format, and the function library can be a DLL function library. The capability module 12 may obtain the run logic file from any external interface, such as an ERP system or other terminal.

Further, the control device of the present invention may further include a cognitive module 13. As previously described in the control module 11, all monitoring of environmental and internal operating conditions is through a series of variables that can be managed by the cognitive module 13. In addition to these real-time variables, the cognitive module 13 is also responsible for storing all information such as the operating logic, programs, and device configuration and operating logs of the control device during operation.

Further, the control device may also include a communication module 14. The data communication of the control device is divided into an external part and an internal part. As used herein, external means a device or software that is external to the MES system software, such as a manufacturing facility. Therefore, in order to achieve a wider range of external communication functions, the communication module 14 herein supports various communication protocols and formats commonly used in the industry, such as HTTP, UDP, USB, RS232, RS485, TCP/IP, etc. This module is responsible for establishing the connection and sending and receiving data over this connection.

Internal communication, which includes data communication between the control device and another control device or between the control device and the ERP system.

In the invention, the internal communication data can be specified to be transmitted based on XML formatting, and the communication protocol can carry out different treatments according to the size of the data unit so as to ensure that the timeliness and the safety meet the requirements. According to the characteristics and requirements of data, the invention adopts two communication protocols:

less than 4K or data with low integrity security requirements

Small data less than 4K, such as control device basic status information, current IP and operational information, need to be broadcast continuously within the MES. Such data uses the UDP protocol and typically does not require a recipient acknowledgement. The grant module also supports recipient validation to implement the handshake mode if needed.

Data greater than 4K or with high requirements for integrity security

This portion, which may be complex device state information, data from a database, file or high throughput test device test result information, and device control instructions, will be transmitted over the more secure, but possibly less processing efficient, HTTP protocol. If the requirement on the safety is higher, the SSL encryption can be carried out on the transmitted data, and the internal information can be ensured not to be intercepted by third-party malicious software.

Here, the permit module 14 realizes the communication capability of the control device inside and outside the MES system, and different data processing modes can be flexibly adopted according to requirements to meet different customized requirements.

It should be noted that there are many data formats in practical application, and in the present invention, the identification and processing of specific data formats can be completed by the self-defined function in the capability module, so as to ensure the universality of the communication module in different schemes.

It can be seen that, in the above control device, the basic structures are the same, and the difference lies in that the function library and the logic file are dynamically loaded when the control device runs, so that the same core code can be adopted when different process equipment is developed, and then the logic file and the function file can be written according to the difference, thereby realizing the high portability of the main part of the program.

The four modules of each control device are mutually called to be organically combined. For example, if we need to develop a function for a certain Device, such as connecting a certain Device Connect2Device, inside the function we can call the communication protocol of the communication module to the external Device, and then change the relevant variables of the cognitive module according to the operation result.

It is anticipated that in an MES system, various functional requirements can be fulfilled by using a plurality of control devices with the above structure, including not only monitoring of equipment, but also data interaction with third-party software (e.g., ERP, CRM, etc.), monitoring and analysis of the MES system, and the like. FIG. 3 illustrates an MES system framework based on a plurality of control devices.

While the present application has been described with examples, those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that there are numerous variations and permutations of the present application without departing from the spirit of the application, and it is intended that the appended claims encompass such variations and permutations without departing from the spirit of the application.

Claims

1. An equipment control device for an MES system is characterized by at least comprising a capability module, a control module, a cognitive module and a communication module;

the capacity module is used for reading an operation logic file and a function library which are sent from the outside, wherein the operation logic file comprises variables representing external environment or internal state values, function direction and a condition process of a function with the operation direction;

the control module is used for loading and operating the operation logic file and the function library, verifying whether the value according to the variable meets the condition flow or not, and operating the function pointed by the function direction when the value meets the condition flow;

the cognitive module is used for acquiring and storing the value of the variable;

the communication module is used for establishing communication connection, transmitting data according to a communication protocol, transmitting first type data according to a UDP protocol and transmitting second type data according to an HTTP protocol, wherein the attributes of the first type data and the second type data are different;

the basic structure of the control device is the same, and the difference is that the function library and the logic file are dynamically loaded when the control device runs; the control module runs the control thread of the control device and is a core module of the control device: firstly, it contains a main thread, in the starting stage, loading operation logic file based on XML format and DLL function library, then according to real-time environment information and internal information data continuously circularly checking operation logic, any logic relation meeting the condition can activate a branch thread to start one or more function functions pointed by function library;

the capability module is used for reading the operation logic file and the function library from the outside and is responsible for managing all the functional functions loaded by the control device, the capability module provides a uniform program interface ICapability, and any self-defined function class inherits the interface so that the functional functions are automatically identified and operated by the capability module when being loaded.

2. The equipment control device for the MES system of claim 1, wherein the cognitive module is further configured to maintain the operational logic file, equipment configuration, and operational log information.

3. The equipment control device for MES systems of claim 1, wherein the capability module is further configured to identify and process a format of the data through the function.

4. The apparatus control device for MES systems of claim 1, wherein the control module is further configured to manage its own threads and handle exception conditions.