Ladder Program Management for Automated Machinery Alterations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems for managing ladder programs in numerical control devices lack efficient mechanisms for tracking and merging alteration histories and correction programs across multiple machinery, leading to increased work man-hours and potential conflicts during machinery alterations.
Innovation Solution
A ladder-program managing device with a database that stores ladder programs and their histories, featuring an identification-information-searching portion to find relevant alteration records and a merging portion to combine correction programs with existing ladder programs, thereby facilitating efficient machinery alterations by reducing manual intervention and conflict resolution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual management of ladder programs and alteration histories is used, then flexibility in handling unique cases is maintained, but work man-hours increase and efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-stores alteration contents and corresponding correction programs in a database before they are needed. When an alteration is required, the system can quickly retrieve and apply pre-prepared correction programs, eliminating the need for manual program creation and significantly reducing work man-hours and processing time.
2Productivity
If centralized management of ladder programs is implemented, then efficiency improves and manual intervention is reduced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs alteration processing by autonomously retrieving correction programs from the database, merging them with current ladder programs, and generating updated programs without requiring manual intervention. This self-service capability simplifies the user interface while maintaining centralized management benefits.
Solution Approach 2:
The database serves as an intermediary between the centralized management system and the machinery alteration process. It stores and manages alteration histories and correction programs, allowing the system to efficiently retrieve and apply appropriate corrections without complex real-time processing or manual intervention.
3Reliability
If alteration histories are tracked and stored, then conflict detection capability improves, but data management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback mechanisms that automatically detect conflicts between new alterations and existing correction programs by comparing alteration histories. When conflicts are detected, the system provides feedback to operators, enabling reliable conflict detection while maintaining relatively simple data management through structured database storage.
Data Source
AI summary
A ladder-program managing device includes: a database that has a ladder-program-storing region in which ladder program for individually controlling a plurality of pieces of machinery are stored, and that contains ladder-program-history information storing, in association with each other, identification information for identifying contents of alterations that have already been applied to the plurality of pieces of machinery and correction programs required to perform the alterations; and a database managing portion that manages the database, wherein the database managing portion is provided with an identification-information-searching portion that searches for, in the ladder-program-history information, identification information corresponding to an alteration content to be applied to an alteration-target machinery, and a merging portion that identifies the correction program corresponding to the searched identification information in the ladder-program-history information, and that merges the correction program with the ladder program for the alteration-target machinery.