Distributed object environment for manufacturing. Final report

This project was initiated as a joint effort between the Department of Energy (DOE) and Ford to accelerate the development of integrated manufacturing systems through the use of emerging object-oriented software integration architectures and international product data standards. The project adopted the Object Management Group (OMG) Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) as the formal model for system integration and the ISO Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) as the formal model for product data integration. No project at the time had brought the combined strengths of CORBA and STEP together to create an integrated system. Because CORBA technologies were just emerging when this project was started in September 1994, a reasonably high risk was assigned to this project. The first objective of this project was to build confidence in the STEP standard by exchanging a STEP description of a power steering pump with a Ford supplier and validating the exchange. This part was successfully exchanged. The second objective was the integration of the Ford in-house configuration management system with a STEP repository using CORBA-based technology. The repository chosen was the KCP Advanced Manufacturing Development System (AMDS), a development repository. This report will describe the power steering pump exchange and CORBA/STEP integration experiences