System for management of cutting machines

Details System for management of cutting machines System for management of cutting machines

1999-08-25

2002-10-08

Picard, Leo (Department: 2125)

Data processing: generic control systems or specific application

Specific application, apparatus or process

Product assembly or manufacturing

C700S096000, C700S159000, C700S180000, C702S033000, C709S223000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06463352

ABSTRACT:

REFERENCE TO MICROFICHE APPENDIX
This application includes a Microfiche appendix for Appendices A and B. The Microfiche appendix consists of five (5) microfiche showing 311 frames (including target and title frames).
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for management of cutting machines.
2. Description of Relevant Materials
Presently, management of cutting machines (e.g., band saws, etc.) is usually carried out on a relatively inflexible basis. Management, in this context, refers to the monitoring of cutting machines, cutting elements, jobs, and users, the collection and analysis of data, and intervention taken to address problems or requests.
Typically, a facility employing several cutting machines will use pencil and paper, or, at best, use computing tools in an ad-hoc fashion to manage their equipment, tool inventory, and work flow. Historical and current status data are not collected and stored in an easily accessible manner, nor can such data be easily organized and centralized.
Programmable band saw systems, in which job programs may be downloaded from a supervisor's computer on-site, are known (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,418,729, “Communication Linkage System for Programmable Bandsaw”, issued May 23, 1995). These band saw systems also permit the retrieval of limited saw and job programming information from the band saw to the supervisor's computer, as well as contemporaneous programming of jobs from the supervisor's computer and/or the bandsaw itself while a job is running. The systems also permit simple conflict detection of job number assignment, and restricted access to saw function values. However, the known systems have many shortcomings for the overall management of a facility or multiple facilities.
The known systems connect the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) of multiple bandsaws to a single general purpose computer, typically operated by a supervisor. The programmable controllers have specific programming installed at the (saw maker's) factory level, and a limited interface device having only a numeric and function keypad and a LCD display having one or two lines of character output. The user interface is therefore static and inflexible, and may not be changed without drastic system overhaul such as replacing the PLCs at each saw. Moreover, only saws specifically designed to interact with the system may be used. The connections to the supervisor computer are over dedicated serial lines, which may not share bandwidth with other signals. Only a rudimentary PLC microprocessor and central computer are contemplated, and the enabling software designed for each microprocessor to permit interaction may only function on the contemplated processor.
No external connections are contemplated, so consultation with the manufacturer or interaction with sales and service providers is impossible. At the same time, management of machines, jobs, and blade inventory at diverse facilities is not facilitated by the known systems. No archiving of data for management purposes, whether locally or available to privileged off-site users, is contemplated. At best, querying of existing machines or jobs involves stepping through a list of assigned job numbers.
Monitoring functions are similarly limited. The distribution of work flow and inventory controls may only be performed from the central computer—a supervisor on the shop floor may not access the system at a supervisor access level, nor would the supervisor enjoy the same monitoring and editing capabilities found at the supervisor station.
Furthermore, although such systems purport to improve work flow, efficiency, and inventory control, they do not contemplate control or management of cutting elements. No data on cutting elements is kept or may be accessed. Since each saw or cutting machine uses replaceable blades or cutting elements, the improper management of which results in work flow bottlenecks, work stoppages, and potential damage to cutting machines and workpieces, the absence of any control over cutting elements in the known systems permits numerous and chronic work flow interruptions.
3. Acronyms
The following is a listing of acronyms used throughout the following disclosure of the present invention.
ASP
- Active Server Page
CGI
- Common Gateway Interface
COM
- Component Object Model
CORBA
- Common Object Request Broker Architecture
DCE
- Distributed Computing Environment
DCOM
- Distributed COM
DHTML
- Dynamic HTML
HTML
- Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP
- Hypertext Transport Protocol
IIOP
- Internet Inter-ORB Protocol
IIS
- Internet Information Server
ISA
- Industry Standard Architecture
ISDN
- Integrated Services Digital Network
JDBC
- Java Database Connectivity
ODBC
- Open Database Connectivity
ORB
- Object Request Broker
Perl
- Practical Extraction and Reporting Language
POS
- Persistent Object Service
PPP
- Point-to-Point Protocol
RMI
- Remote Method Invocation
RPC
- Remote Procedure Call
SGML
- Standard Generalized Markup Language
SQL
- Structured Query Language
TCP/IP
- Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
URL
- Uniform Resource Locator
VPN
- Virtual Private Network
XML
- eXtensible Markup Language
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The system for management provides unexpected benefits for different interested parties—each facility employing cutting machines, a company with several facilities, and the manufacturer of cutting machines.
According to a first aspect of the invention, a system for management of cutting machines and allocation of jobs among the cutting machines, includes a plurality of cutting machines, each cutting machine having a monitor input device through which monitor data indicating the status of the cutting machine is input, and a plurality of virtual machine components for collecting the monitor data, each virtual machine component corresponding to a cutting machine. A database serving component that communicates with the machine monitoring component, records and reads descriptive data including a machine table for describing the cutting machines and a job table describing jobs to be performed on the cutting machines, associates the job table with the machine table, and for records and reads usage data derived from the monitor data and descriptive data. A machine monitoring component retrieves the monitor data from all of the plurality of virtual machine component and generates the usage data, and provides the monitor data and usage data to the database serving component. A user interface serving component communicates with the database serving component and the machine monitoring component, and serves dynamic interactive user interface elements containing portions of the usage data, monitor data and identifying data. The content of the dynamic interactive user interface elements is different depending on the content of the usage data, monitor data and descriptive data. At least one user interface interpreting component displays the dynamic interactive user interface elements.
In this manner, the system is distributed, and the operative components may be placed at any processor in the facility—e.g., all components may run and interact on a single processor, or separate but networked components may be provided on individual processors for each cutting machine, for a machine monitor, for a database server, for a web server, and for client browsers. Two or more of the components may be provided on the same processor when such a configuration takes advantage of existing facility layout. Since the monitoring components (particularly the virtual machine components, and machine monitor component) are platform-independent, the present system may be applied to a system of diverse manufacturer's cutting machines, as a special purpose data interface is not required.
A further feature of the invention is that each of the plurality of virtual machine components, the machine monitoring component, the database serving component, the user interface serving component, and at least one user interface interpreting component has an iden

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