Increasing flexibility and availability of manufacturing systems - dynamic reconfiguration of automation software at runtime on sensor faults

This proposal introduces a conceptual design of self-adapting system software to manage sensor failures in factory automation. The approach reconfigures the arrangement of software modules in real time to preserve the required stability of production processes without interrupts. Reconfiguration will be decided by rules from a knowledge base system. This paper discusses conventional, o bject oriented and agent based concepts, and focuses on modelling of these concepts. For discussion purposes, a real industrial application - a continuous thermo-hydraulic press will be presented as application example.