3. Modeling of a production Line
3.1. Plant panel
The plant panel shows the condition and configuration of machines which are used to manufacture products in a virtual production line. The plant panel also sets up the configuration of a virtual
production line. Fig. 5 shows the detail of the plant panel. Initially, the configuration of the production line and details of component machines are provided and the plant panel sets up machine agents with machine model corresponding to the input configuration by using templates of the machine model. When executing virtual production, the operator could indicate active machines and non-active machines. When the configuration is changed, it is easily reflected by deletion/generation of
machine agents. Templates are prepared to describe specification and capability of the machine by filling up the template. The template in XML is prepared corresponding to the machine type. The plant panel monitors the machine status on the virtual production line, collects operation data, productivity data and environmental data, calculates the total of the economical and environmental index by communicating with machine agents.