This paper describes the design and realization of a component-
based application framework to develop Manufacturing
Execution Systems (MES). Manufacturing Execution Systems
(MES) are a recently defined category of industrial software for
the plant floor/manufacturing environment. The overall goal has
been to enable the development of MES software systems by
composition and extensions of prefabricated building blocks.
The framework-based development of MES applications
guarantees significant reduction in development time and cost
by increased software quality. The framework is grounded on
two supplementing approaches – on the one side, an event- and
constraint-based modelling approach is used to represent
equipment states and production workflow and, on the other
side, object-oriented and component-based software technology
have been used as the underlying realization concepts. The
framework has been realized in Microsoft’s new C#
programming language and .NET Framework.
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Keywords: application frameworks, component-based software
development, .NET Framework, C# language, manufacturing
execution systems, workflow modelling.
