Experience of the Application of Intelligent Control Paradigms to Real Manufacturing Processes

Abstract

The application of conventional and intelligent control paradigms to the dispensing of adhesive in the manufacture of mixed technology printed circuit boards, a real process with real time constraints and error conditions, is outlined in this paper. A description of the process and its various operation and error states is followed by a brief discussion of the application of conventional (system identification and incremental proportional control) and intelligent (knowledge-based, fuzzy logic and neural network) controllers to the system. Comments on the control and timing performance of each paradigm are given.