TABLE OF CONTENTS For interconnection purposes, a factory automation (FA) system can be combined with various sensors, controllers, and heterogeneous machines using a common message specification. In particular, interconnection of heterogenous machines through a common message specification promotes flexibility and interoperability. For this reason, the manufacturing message specification (MMS) standard have been developed. The standard specifies a set of communication primitives and communication protocols for the factory communication environment. In particular, the MMS standard specifies various functionalities of the different FA devices in a compatible way. Thus, users of MMS applications have to use functions from only one unique set of functionalities to operate various kinds of automation machines. Moreover, the different automation machines can communicate among themselves through the standard automation language. This enables transition from the traditional centralized control to the distributed control systems.
The MMS standard is composed of the common standards and the MMS companion standard (MMSCS). The MMSCS includes device-dependent specifications for a robot, numerical controller (NC), programmable logic controller (PLC), and process control (PC). In its initial stage, the MMS standard was developed for an application layer of the manufacturing automation protocol (MAP). Nowadays, MMS have been implemented on top of the TCP/IP protocol suite and is used as a reference model for industrial network or other message protocols, such as the home network protocol. In particular, MMS is implemented in a minimized form as the application layer for Profibus (Process...
