Workshop-level T Ool Management System Based On Radio Frequency Identification

In the last few decades, rapid innovation of numerical control technology and manufacturing equipments promote automatic level of manufacturing, and the promotion of automatic level greatly boosts the development of manufacturing industry in turn. Cutting tools are the core resources in the process of mechanical manufacturing. They are featured by multiple varieties, huge amount, extensive in circulation and fast consumption. With the increase of type of machine tools and workpieces, types of cutting tools and corresponding resource information have become more and more complicated. Therefore, seeking a reliable tool identification technology and effective tool management mode is directly related to the production efficiency and cost. It is conducive to the attainment of minimum inventory and minimum capital. Traditional manual methods of tool automatic identification and information management can not meet the requirements of automatic production, severely restricted flexibility of production line. Tool management system serves as an automatic management method which to solve the problem of tool automatic identification and procedure management from storage to scrap is an important foundation for the realization of flexible manufacturing and intelligent production. Therefore the research of tool automatic identification technology and the development of tool management system have great practical significance. Combining the state-of-the-art of tool management of Weichai Power Co., Ltd and Tianrun Crankshaft Co., Ltd, a workshop-level tool management system based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was developed. Dynamic and static information management which includes basic information, output and entrance storehouse information, inventory information, life information, position information and status information of the system was ultimately realized, which can meet the application requirements of the enterprise.Firstly, the management objects and functional requirements of the system were determined based on machining process analysis of typical parts and requirements analysis of tool management system. Then the overall framework of software system which includes the construction of function structure model, business processes models as well as architecture model was designed.Secondly, an automatic identification technology based on radio frequency identification which could implement automatic identification and information tracking of tools was presented, then detailed application scheme was given. RFID was used for unique identification of each tool, and the combination of radio frequency identification technology and tool entity was accomplished. RFID middleware which was used to establish communication between the hardware and the software was designed and implemented. The mixed coding of letters and numbers was adopted to establish tool coding system which is used to eliminate ambiguity of description.Then, the requirements analysis of database was carried out by using Data Flow Diagram method. The transmission and processing of system data information were described, and the data structure and data items were designed. Additionally, the concept structure of the database was constructed by using Entity Relationship Diagram, and the logical structure of the database was designed by SQL Server 2008.Finally, the functional interfaces of the system were designed by C# language based on.NET Framework4.5 development platform of Microsoft visual studio 2010 integrated compiler environment. Then the implementation of the system was expounded on specific functional modules. The hardware of the system was debugged by the reader configuration software, and the functional verification of the developed system was finished. The verification results showed that the tool management system can realize a series of management functions concerned with tool information and logistics status, such as information maintenance, storage management, inventory management, tracking and monitoring, etc. The system could provide platform support and technique guarantee to effective management of tools.Development and application of multi-functional tool management system is the developing direction of tool automatic management. It has important significance of improving reliability of manufacturing execution system, making timely response decisions, guaranteeing processing quality of products.