International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

In this paper is presented the method of planning and analysis of the materials handling line in one production company. The method consists of design, simulations, and analysis with the support of Arena simulation software. The design of the line is accomplished using modular modelling with interconnected modules and blocks, and simulations will be carried out to view the flow of boxes with materials and the functionality of main units and processes. The modelled line contains all the necessary units of the input processes, production and output processes, warehouses, materials handling vehicles, and the process flow of packages. Analysis will investigate key performance parameters and evaluate the functionality of the line. Production and logistics companies are implementing various software to plan and design their materials handling line, internal transports and production processes prior to the implementation and development of their plant. This enables them to plan the work, determine influential parameters and identify problems in the functionality. Results will be given in the graphical and tabular forms, which will represent the analysis of performance parameters and line efficiency.

In this publication is presented a method for design of an operating station based on a TCL / TK – portable open source programmed platform, implemented for different operating systems (Windows, Unix, Linux, Solaris, Android).

In the article three possible approaches to building an operator station are considered:

(1) Classical approach which is realized by using of “event processing”, “call back” and “graphical tools” features of TCL/TK;

(2) The "Multi- interpreters" realisation using a number of interpreters of TCL;

(3) “Multi- threads" mode, including cooperative working of one or more program threads.

The described approaches are illustrated by presented implementation of an operating station to wireless control system for a group of intelligent instruments which are designed for laparoscopic surgery.

In order to achieve its goal in using intelligent adaptive and predictive technical systems with self-X functions and cognitive information processing in continuous interaction with environment, the Industry 4.0 initiative implies integration of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing leading to what is called "smart factory". This, in turn, faces the CPS with new challenges in terms of increasing the degree of distribution, autonomy, mobility, communication and security of the systems and their components, as well as expanding their functionality in the direction of data analytics, information and knowledge extraction, and increasing their intelligence. This paper discusses and analyses the CPS in the context of Industry 4.0 and the main trends in the development of process automation and control in order to suggest an appropriate and advanced agent based approach for development of CPS for process control. The proposed approach is based on using the following standards – from one side the IEC61499 Standard for agent specification and from other side the IEC62264 and IEC 61512 Standards for defining the different kind of agents in the control system. The presented approaches are illustrated with a partly presented example of development of Injector control system. Finally some conclusions are made.