تغییرات بهره وری تولید بالقوه ناشی از استفاده از فن آوری های مبتنی بر اینترنت،

This paper describes a series of industry-based projects involving simulation, scheduling and monitoring of the facilities in a distributed environment based on World Wide Web (WWW) technologies so that its operations located in geographically distant regions can be integrated. The recent WWW technologies would enable operations such as scheduling, simulation as well as the monitoring of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) through the Internet to be achieved. In the School of Manufacturing Engineering of Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NUST) in China, a manufacturing environment simulating the operations of a FMS has been created to provide a unique show-window for academics as well as industry through Internet. The users in NUST can use the web browser to access the server in Hong Kong and run the applets to schedule, simulate and monitor the FMS in Hong Kong. After building the server system with the necessary web server, video server and the applets linking to the machines of the FMS, the effect of changes in productivity will be studied.

The objective of a series of industry-based projects involving simulation, scheduling and monitoring of the facilities [1] and [2] in a distributed environment based on World Wide Web (WWW) technologies is to study the effect on changes on the productivity. Firstly, a customer training centre has been built in Nanjing, China. This centre can provide the users in Nanjing the access to the operation, simulation as well as the monitoring of the CNC machines and robots in the flexible manufacturing system (FMS), located in Hong Kong. The basic feature of a FMS has to be introduced in order that the users in Nanjing can understand the operation of the FMS. The FMS in Hong Kong consists of two CNC turning centres with a handling robot and one horizontal and one vertical CNC machining centre. An automatic guided vehicle (AGV) is used to transport the parts between an automatic store retrieval system (ASRS) and the CNC machines. An articulated robot is employed to serve the two turning centres. The layout of the FMS in Hong Kong is shown in Fig. 1.

It is expected that this series of industry-based projects should be able to set up the environment for the manufacturing facilities in distant locations with the development of WWW technologies. The development of the server is essential for this project. The Internet Server should include the Web, FTP and Video functions. The purpose of Web server is to expose the Web page to the users connected to Internet, and receive commands from the authorized users. The FTP server is pointed to the directory for the storage of drawing data and NC programs and opened for user to upload and download files. In addition, the Video server provides real time monitoring from several locations of the FMS system with the pan, tilt, and zoom functions of the cameras. With the successful implementation of the Internet server for this project, the use of the Internet-based CAD/CAM software can also be achieved easily. Both Nanjing and Hong Kong engineers can work together interactively through the Internet server in using the CAD/CAM software to design the product. Microsoft NetMeeting with video conferencing would help to solve the communication problem. The engineers in both sides can talk and see each other through Internet as well as use the CAD/CAM software simultaneously for a single CAD model for a product.