Process comprehension for interoperable CNC manufacturing

Over the last 40 years manufacturing industry has enjoyed a rapid growth with the support of CNC machines and various computer-aided systems (CAD, CAPP, CAM etc.) known collectively as CAx systems. Interoperability across different CAx systems has become increasingly important for manufacturing industries, especially in the current competitive marketing environment. Even though CNC machines are major contributors to the production capacity of enterprises, the interoperability between CNC machines and both CAx systems and other CNC machines remains difficult due to the low level part programming language that is used (GM codes) to programme the machines. In this research, a Universal Process Comprehension interface (UPCi) for different CNC machines is proposed aiming to comprehend a system generic process plan from a low-level part programme. This would enable shopfloor interoperability and allows bidirectional communication between CNC machines and CAx resources. The novel architecture proposed in this research is extensible to accommodate different types of CNCs. A new type of CNC can be interfaced with the system by defining a semantic dictionary of its programming rules. In this paper, the framework of UPCi is introduced. A prototype implementation is presented and the method is verified through the use of an example case study part.