After suggesting the importance of the prediction on what are possible features in production systems of future, the present and future trends of the Flexible Manufacturing System are described. It is pointed out that the employment of the distributed cell-integrated FMS, positively using the information network, is expected to be the most major trend in future. In connection with such trends of the FMS, the design method for the FMS of the future is also discussed on the basis of knowledge of the design method being employed, and it is predicted that the FMS of hierarchical modular type has good potential. In addition, the important technical subjects to be solved in such present and future design methods, are suggested in this paper. In the case of the FMaS, for example, the most important research objectives are to develop a compact FMaC with highly integrated system functions and also to establish the software interface.
展开▼
