To enhance the effectiveness of the FMS (flexible manufacturing system), it is necessary for the manufacturing control system to be upgraded by integrating the cyber and the physical manufacturing systems. Using the CPPS (Cyber-Physical Production System) concept, this study proposes a 4-stage vertical integration and control framework for an aircraft parts manufacturing plant. In the proposed framework, the process controller prepares the operations schedule for processing work orders generated from the APS (advanced planning & scheduling) system. The scheduled operations and the related control commands are assigned to equipments by the dispatcher of the line controller. The line monitor is responsible for monitoring the overall status of the FMS including work orders and equipments. Finally the process monitor uses the simulation model to check the performance of the production plan using real time plant status data. The W-FMCS (Wing rib-Flexible Manufacturing Control & Simulation) are developed to implement the proposed 4-stage CPPS based FMS control architecture. The effectiveness of the proposed control architecture is examined by the real plant’s operational data such as utilization and throughput. The performance improvement examined shows the usefulness of the framework in managing the smart factory’s operation by providing a practical approach to integrate cyber and physical production systems.

This study deals with the case study on the pallet quantity determination problem for the flexible manufacturing system producing 32 different types of aircraft wing ribs which are major structures of an aircraft wings. A Korean company has constructed the WFMS (wing rib flexible manufacturing system) that is composed of several automated equipments such as the 5-axis machining centers, the RGV (rail guided vehicles)s, the AS/RS (automated storage and retrieval system), the loading/unloading stations, and so on. Pallets play a critical role in the WFMS to maintain high system utilization and continuous work flow between 5-axis machining machines and automated material handling devices. The discrete event simulation method is used to evaluate the performance of the WFMS under various pallet mix alternatives for wing rib manufacturing processes. Four performance measures including system utilization, throughput, lead-time and work in process inventory level are investigated to determine the best pallet mix alternative. The best pallet mix identified by the simulation study is adopted in setting up and operating a real Korean aircraft parts manufacturing shop. By comparing the real WFMS’s performances with those of the simulation study, we discussed the cause of performance difference observed and the necessity of developing the CPS (cyber physical system).