Interfacing industrial robotic systems with manufacturing tracking and control software: a choice for semi‐autonomous manufacturing systems

Purpose – This technical paper reports the development of an industrial robotic labeling system, designed to insert identification labels on rolls of paper coming from an industrial paper machine. Design/methodology/approach – The system was developed for an existing installation comprising a paper machine, a roll measuring and weighting station and a roll wrapping machine. The labels identify each roll by means of barcodes, which are used internally in the factory to identify and store each roll at the automatic warehouse and by the customer company for similar purposes. Findings – In describing an industrial application designed for labeling applications, this paper discusses and details a software interface designed to command shop‐floor manufacturing systems remotely from the manufacturing tracking software. This adds in terms of flexibility and agility, since all available operations were implemented in a very general way requiring only simple parameterization to specify the individual operations. Practical implications – Since the TCP/IP server is a general implementation, using the BSD compatible TCP/IP socket implementation from Microsoft, it can receive commands from virtually any client. This makes this robotic cell interface an interesting way to command shop‐floor manufacturing systems. Originality/value – Demonstrates a method for controlling shop‐floor manufacturing systems that has broad applications.