Development of flexible manufacturing system for control and automation applications in intelligent production systems

The development of Intelligent Production Systems has initiated a new approach and change in the industry due to the digitalization of every stage of the production chain and the interaction of machine-human-infrastructure. The talent gap is projected to widen even further as technological advancements increase the amount of work that can be performed by automation rather than by humans. Employees who can add value by utilizing technology and providing solutions with the technical skills required by these technologies are more advantageous in this environment. Determining methods that make it simple for people to adopt new technologies and study in a way that keeps them from being idle in the labor market is therefore becoming more and more crucial as part of efforts to improve the quality of vocational education. Within the scope of this thesis, and for the reasons stated above, it is intended to develop an experimental setup, Flexible Manufacturing System, with the collaboration of MET Didactic Company. The experimental set is designed to be a factory automation set with structuring options such as product flexibility and station sequencing flexibility. Thanks to the developed system industrial automation and communication, data processing, motion control systems can be used as a training material. Moreover, some measurements such as pressure, dimensional measurements of the test products is provided with the architecture. Predictive maintenance, visualization is also performed in the system. In the "New Industrial Revolution: Intelligent Production Systems Technology Roadmap" published by TUBITAK in 2016, outputs were obtained with the thesis work on the following issues as a contribution to the areas that are considered to provide the most added value: (i) A flexible production system experiment set equipped with up-to-date technologies has been developed for use in vocational and technical education. (ii) Since the experimental set-up is developed in an open architecture and modular structure, it is open to continuous improvement in terms of both functionality and technology.