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On the futuristic machine control in a STEP-compliant
manufacturing scenario
C. Zhang a; R. Liu a; T. Hu a
a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, China

Online Publication Date: 01 September 2006

To cite this Article: Zhang, C., Liu, R. and Hu, T. (2006) 'On the futuristic machine
control in a STEP-compliant manufacturing scenario', International Journal of
Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 19:6, 508 — 515
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 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Vol. 19, No. 6, September 2006, 508 – 515
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008

On the futuristic machine control in a STEP-compliant

manufacturing scenario
C. ZHANG*, R. LIU and T. HU

School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250061, China

STEP-NC (ISO 14649) provides a new data interface for computer numerical control
(CNC) machine tools. However, replacing the current ISO 6983 with STEP-NC is not
only a matter of change in NC programming language but it also has a far-reaching and
profound effect on the future CNCs and even on manufacturing systems. The CNCs are
destined to evolve from pure controllers into integrated systems with both decision-
making and control abilities. In this paper, strategies for implementing the STEP-
compliant CNC systems are discussed and a framework for the autonomous STEP-NC
controller is proposed. The controller is organized into two agents: the planning agent
and the machining agent. This paper also provides a general discussion on issues about
the part program interpretation, the on-line process planning. In order to support
dynamic planning as well as meet the real-time requirements in NC machining, it is
proposed to solve the on-line planning issues in two stages, i.e. the shop-floor planning
and the real-time planning. It is also proposed to extend the feature-based algorithm to
the interpolation stage.

Keywords: STEP-NC; Agent; Intelligent manufacturing; CNC; Process planning

modern manufacturing, it is evident that it has become a

1. Introduction
Since the early 1950s, numerical control (NC) machine
tools have been revolutionizing the metal-working practices
by incorporating the latest advances in electronics, pro-
gramming techniques and information technology. In the
1970s, computers were incorporated into the NC system
and thus NC evolved into CNC (computer numerical
control). The advent of CNC brought a massive improve-
ment in the capacities of the NC/CNC machines tools.
Meanwhile the NC programming task has become so
burdensome that, most of the time, off-line software tools
have to be applied in modern workshops. From the
automated programming tool (APT) to modern computer
aided manufacturing (CAM) systems, the off-line solutions
for NC programming have improved efficiency greatly;
however, the CNC programming interface, known as G &
M codes (ISO 6983), essentially stayed the same. Although
the international standard ISO 6983 is still widely used in
bottleneck, because of data model noncompliance through
the CAD, computer aided process planning (CAPP), CAM
and CNC (Xu and He 2004). STEP-NC (Weck et al. 2001)
is a new data interface that extends STEP (ISO 10303) into
the NC domain (Hardwick and Loffredo 2001). However,
replacing the current ISO 6983 with STEP-NC is not only a
matter of change in NC programming language but it also
facilitates the current CNC to become more capable.
Basically CNC is a part program executor. However, a
number of schemes have been proposed for the CNC
architecture in recent years. The open architecture CNC
has been one of the main objectives since the 1980s
(Pritschow 1993). The holonic numerical controller (HNC)
is a rather intelligent CNC featuring autonomy and
cooperation (Bongaerts et al. 1995). The TRUE-CNC
(Yamazaki 2001), VIVID-CNC and then OMNI-CNC
extend the conventional CNC into integrated manufac-
turing information system to enhance the ability of

*Corresponding author. Email: crzhang@sdu.edu.cn

International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing

ISSN 0951-192X print/ISSN 1362-3052 online ª 2006 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09511920600623682
 Futuristic machine control in STEP-compliant manufacturing
autonomous information generation and acquisition. With
the progress in STEP-NC, a few testing and implementa-
tion works have been reported (Lee and Bang 2003), and
an intelligent STEP-NC controller that takes advantage
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008
of the new data model becomes one of the main concerns
in academia and industries. The autonomous STEP-
compliant CNC (ASNC) (Suh et al. 2002) is a conceptual
framework that consists of basic modules, functional
modules, interface modules and control modules.
2. STEP-NC controller and STEP0-compliant manufacture
Generally speaking, a mechanical part has to go through at
least two stages in order to be actually machined in a CNC
machine tool after being designed in a computer aided
design (CAD) system. The first is the programming stage,
which is usually done in aid of a CAM system. The second
is the actual machining stage, which is carried out in a CNC
machine tool. The part program bridges the gap between
the two stages. So the paradigm for programming is
decisive to the functional requirements of both CAM and
CNC. In a conventional process chain (figure 1), decisions
have to be made in almost every detail in the programming
stage. The part programs include detailed motion and
switch instructions so CNC does not need any more
intelligence as long as it dutifully follows the commands
and controls the machine tool. On the contrary, in a STEP-
compliant manufacturing scenario the part program is a
range of information such as the feature to be machined,
tool types used, the operations to perform, etc. while the
very machine-specific decisions are left to the CNC and its
Figure 1. Information flow in process chain.
509
operator. In this paper this new breed of controller is called
STEP-NC controller.
Apparently the STEP-NC controller will overcome the
limit of the traditional CNC concept. First, it will be a
computer application system with the abilities of decision
making as well as control of the machine tool. It should be
able to understand the STEP-NC part program, which is
comprehensive but somewhat like ‘uncooked raw materials
with a rough recipe’ (Suh et al. 2002), and decides and
prepares the machine-specific details for the machining
process. Second, with STEP-NC having set up a bi-
directional information highway between the machine and
the CAD/CAM system, STEP-NC controller will take a
more active role in manufacturing. Undoubtedly the
controller will act more intelligently than ever before
because it is ready to be informed of the available resources
and the operating condition of the machine tool. That is to
say, decisions made by the STEP-NC controller are more
reliable than the estimations of an upstream system. So it is
foreseeable that the STEP-NC controller will probably
become a decision maker in the manufacturing system.
3. Implementation strategies for STEP-NC controller
There are a number of options for interpretation and
implementation of STEP-NC in CNC systems. Therefore,
STEP-NC controllers may be implemented at different
levels in the future. The different implementations are given
in this paper as interfaced STEP-NC controller, CAM-
embedded STEP-NC controller and intelligent STEP-NC
controller.
 510 C. Zhang et al.
3.1. Interfaced STEP-NC controller
As shown in figure 2, the simplest way to interface the
STEP-NC codes with CNC is probably to add an
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interpreting module to CNC. The interpreting module
converts the STEP-NC based program into G&M codes
and then feed them into the NC kernel. In this case, the
interpreter acts as a comprehensive post processor trans-
planted from CAM to CNC, and a conventional CNC can
be used with little modification. It should be noted that part
program must be well organized in advance on a CAM
system by a programmer who is familiar with the machine
resource, for this kind of STEP-NC controller has no more
intelligence than a traditional CNC except for the capacity
of interpreting the STEP-NC codes. Since this kind of
STEP-NC controllers depends highly on more capable
CAD/CAM systems, Newman et al. (2003) presented a
number of CAD/CAM solutions and implemented a system
(AB–CAM) for the STEP-compliant manufacture in the
light of this kind of STEP-NC controllers.
3.2. CAM-embedded STEP-NC controller
As shown in figure 3, the CAM-embedded STEP-NC
controller is basically a combination of an STEP-NC code
interpreter, a basic CAM and a conventional CNC. The
interpreter translates the physical file into the internal data
format, the CAM makes decisions on the machine-specific
details and generates G&M codes, and finally the CNC
executes the codes. In this case, the STEP-NC controller
can be implemented with certain intelligences; however the
problems between CAM and CNC are not solved but
hidden.
Figure 2. Interfaced STEP-NC controller.
Figure 3. CAM-embedded STEP-NC controller.
3.3. Intelligent STEP-NC controller
3.3.1. Functional requirements. The above discussion
concentrates on a CNC that can receive a file with STEP-
NC data and proceed milling accordingly. There is still
much room for improvement. For example, they are too
dependent on the operator’s experience. Considering that
STEP-NC provides an information highway as well as
facilitates the improvement on modern CNC, it is highly
desirable to develop an intelligent STEP-NC controller
with an efficient mechanism to take full advantage of the
comprehensive information of the data model.
Some functional requirements of a STEP-NC controller
may be outlined.
(a) Real-time control. As a machine controller, the basic
function of the STEP-NC controller is to control the
machine tool by sending control signals to the
actuators and receiving feedback information for
verification. It is also assumed that the controller can
execute its program as quickly as necessary to meet
the real-time constraints of the machining process.
(b) Integrated active quality control. The system is
intelligent sensor based and can dynamically
acquire the information of machining process and
machine tool and perform the diagnostics and
monitoring to assure the product quality.
(c) STEP-NC interfaced. The controller must be able
to read, understand and convert the information
contained in a STEP-NC file. In addition, a graphic
user interface should be provided for visualizing of
editing, operation and simulation of the machining
process.
 Futuristic machine control in STEP-compliant manufacturing
(d) Micro-process planning and inspection. The con-
troller should be able to make decisions on the
process-related details, including generating tool
trajectory on a feature/working-step basis, optimiz-
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008
ing the technological parameters, sequencing the
working-steps etc. As on-machine inspection is vital
to the time reduction and quality control in the part
manufacture, the controller should also support the
part inspection. Nowadays ISO 14649 part 16 is
under development for the STEP-compliant inspec-
tion (Ali et al. 2005).
(e) Resources management. To manage and control
the tool magazine, loading/unloading robots etc.
The controller can only make the best decision
when it knows well about the available resources.
(f) Autonomy. The controller should be able to plan
and control the machining process autonomously,
including the ability to deal with unexpected
change/failure.
(g) Cooperativeness. As one system of the manufactur-
ing chain, the controller should be able to
communicate with other systems.
(h) Knowledge acquisition. The adoption of the STEP-
NC paradigm brings forth the opportunity to
consider not just the information but also the
knowledge requirements for process planning and
machining discrete parts (Newman 2004). To
support the intelligent manufacturing, the control-
ler needs to have a lot of manufacturing knowledge,
and more importantly it should be able to learn and
acquire new knowledge.
3.3.2. Types of the intelligent STEP-NC controller.
Although the approach of using intelligent systems is not
new, and every feature mentioned above is not a new topic
in manufacturing, there are some major challenges to
incorporate so many features to the machine controller.
Maybe the STEP-NC controllers can be grouped into three
different functional levels, as shown in figure 4.
Autonomous-type controller is of an ability of process
and operation planning, analysis and control. It should
be implemented with most of the above-mentioned func-
tional requirements from (a) to (f). Autonomous- and
cooperative-type controller is a special autonomous
Figure 4. Different levels of the intelligent STEP-NC
controller.
511
controller with cooperative ability. It is capable of
e-consultation with outside including job-cooperative and
information service. A holonic STEP-NC controller is
suitable for web-based manufacturing. It can be an agent
that can not only perform the task of process planning and
control well, but can also evaluate the received task and
negotiate with other agents on internet.
3.3.3. Other considerations. As to the implementation of
STEP-NC, the following aspects should also be taken into
consideration.
(a) Current approaches and tendencies of CNC tech-
nology. Open architecture is a trend of CNC
technology. PC-based vendor-neutral hardware
and software result in a control system that is
economical, maintainable, open, modular and
scalable. It also provides the possibility for user
and developer to integrate STEP-NC functions into
system. Therefore STEP-NC controller should be
implemented as open as possible.
(b) As compatible with STEP application as possible.
Although STEP-NC just defines an STEP compli-
ant interface for CNC, the compatibility of the
CNC system with STEP compliant CAD/CAM
systems will be essential for the seamless connection
of these systems in an e-manufacturing scenario.
(c) More capable mechanism. STEP-NC controller is a
decision-making and control system. It cannot be
regarded as an extension in functionalities of the
conventional CNC. The decision-making tasks and
the control tasks should not be separated.
4. An agent-based framework
4.1. Architecture of ADACOR agent
The performance of a STEP-NC controller depends on the
design goal as well as on its architecture. In this paper, the
architecture of ADACOR (adaptive and cooperative
control architecture for distributed manufacturing systems)
agent (Paulo and Restivo 2001) is considered in our
approach.
As shown in figure 5, in the agent there are three basic
modules and a database, which stores all relevant informa-
tion about its behaviour. The communication module deals
with the need of interaction between distributed agents.
The local control and supervision module intends to
control and supervise the operational execution of the
agent. Only this module interacts with the physical devices.
The decision-making module is supposed to be in charge of
all the intelligent activities as a whole. To make a decision it
uses the knowledge stored in the local database, and when
necessary it starts a cooperation process with other agents,
 512 C. Zhang et al.
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008
Figure 5. Architecture of the ADACOR agent.
trying to find out the necessary information or negotiate
about the task. Apparently this architecture and mecha-
nism conform to the idea of developing an autonomous and
cooperative controller in many aspects.
4.2. Framework for the controller
Considering the comprehensive functionality and require-
ment for real-time motion control, some modifications have
to be made for a STEP-NC controller. From the perspective
of planning, many issues do not need to be solved in real-
time. From the control point, motion control, machine
Input/Output device control, robot control etc. have different
time-critical level requirements, and among them, motion
control is of top priority. Therefore as shown in figure 6, the
task of the motion control and a little decision-making work
are separated from the whole and organized into an agent
called machining agent, while others (each task may be
organized as an agent in the future) are assigned into another,
called planning agent. Both agents are expected to deal with
certain amount of both decision-making and control issues.
Figure 7 shows the two agents are integrated. Actually
they are organized in a hierarchical way. The planning
agent decides on the operation strategies and controls all
the preparatory activities before the real-time machining,
including understanding the program, checking out the
available resources, analysing the given recipe, planning as
a whole, resource management, etc. When a task is
received, the agent will interpret it into the internal data
model, check the available resources and check whether the
work can be accomplished by the machine agent, and then
decides whether to take the job or not. Generally speaking,
if ‘no’, it should form a report and stop; if only just for a
little problem, it may negotiate through its communication
module using the communication mechanism as discussed
in the reference (Paulo and Restivo 2001) with the upstream
systems in order to make some changes; if ‘yes’, it will find
out the best way and decompose it into sequenced unit
tasks that can be easily completed on the machine. The set-
up module, in charge of the fixture and tooling tasks, acts
as the local control module of the planning agent. Note that
the physical activities of the machine tool are separated in
light of the real-time requirement of motion control.
Figure 6. Structure of the planning and machining agents.
The machining agent controls the physical process of the
machining according to the tasks given by the planning
agent and collects the status of the machine tool resources.
When the machining cycle starts, it reads the unit tasks and
converts them into specific instructions in turn. When a
unit task fails owing to unexpected occurrence such as a
tool breakage, the real-time planning module will check if
there is another tool available in the magazine. If ‘yes’, an
additional unit task will be inserted automatically. Other-
wise, it reports to the planning agent for help. The NC
kernel module in figure 7 stands for something such as the
software-based motion control as a whole, which interfaces
directly with the machine tool. The adaptive control means
that the cutting parameters are dynamically determined
during operation. The communication module in this part
is for internal interaction (reporting, supervising etc) with
the planning agent, thus can be implemented in a simple
and direct way.
5. Major issues in implementation
5.1. Part interpretation
As for the implementation of the STEP-NC controller, the
first thing we are confronted with is the interpretation or
recognition of the part program based on STEP-NC.
Actually the STEP-NC program is a text file based on ISO
10303-21. Owing to the complex data model and mapping
procedure from ARM through AIM to the file structure,
the STEP-NC file is usually complicated and beyond
readability. In addition to keep compatible or share data
with other STEP applications, the STEP methodology
should be adopted.
In fact, STEP-NC controller can be regarded as a special
STEP application. The interpretation module can be
implemented referring to the STEP methodology. As
shown in figure 8, the interpretation usually takes two
steps. First, each entity or data type defined in the
 Futuristic machine control in STEP-compliant manufacturing 513
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008

Figure 7. A framework for the STEP-NC controller.

Figure 8. EXPRESS to Cþþ.

EXPRESS schema should be mapped to internal data

format (Cþþ is only considered in this paper) that can be
used by the programming language, for example, defining
the class CSlot for Slot. Then in the second step, each
instance of the entity Slot will be transformed into a CSlot
object. At the same time, the logical link of the entities is
also expressed as relationship between Cþþ classes, e.g.
inheritance, membership etc.

5.2. Process planning

As well as the interpretation of the part program, the
process planning is also essential in implementation of
STEP-NC controller, and a feature-based approach is
needed. However it is not necessary to incorporate a
complete CAM system into the controller. In general,
process-related issues can be solved in two stages, i.e. off-
line planning and on-line planning. Considering the special
requirements in STEP-NC machining, the on-line planning
is divided into a shop-floor planning stage and a real-time
planning stage, thus a three-stage process planning mode
is outlined in this paper (figure 9). Issues involved in
Figure 9. A three-stage process planning mode.
the shop-floor planning include manufacturability analysis,
workingstep-level planning, feature-level planning and
workpiece-level planning (Liu et al. 2004a).
Tasks for real-time planning include (i) real-time
generation of the tool trajectory and control codes just
before the execution of the workingstep; and (ii) real-time
adjusting of the technological parameters in machining
process.
 514 C. Zhang et al.

feature-based algorithm into the interpolation stage

5.3. Interface between the two agents
(figure 11). It is expected to achieve the following goals:
To generate and control the tool path precisely is vital to
NC machining. Traditionally path generation and control (i) to eliminate the G codes both outside and inside
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008

is actually carried out in different systems. As shown in
figure 10, the machining of the part has to go through a lot
of procedures in both the CAM and CNC systems.
Although a CAM system may apply the feature-based
approach in planning, the results have to be decomposed
into low-level messages to be readable to CNC.
However, STEP-NC breaks this rule, and the machine
controller has to deal with both. This indicates the current
situation, in which the low-level geometrical elements must
be used in path planning and interpolation might be
changed. Based on the STEP-NC data model, a feature-
based approach is thus proposed in this paper to extend the
the controller, which will save time spent in coding
and encoding;
(ii) to provide the control module with more detailed
information for real-time decision making to some
extent;
(iii) to make the information flow smooth by adopting
an internal data interface;
(iv) to support dynamical planning by working-step
based tool path description.
To date this has not been implemented, but the idea of
using feature-based approach is not new. For example,

Figure 10. Traditional process from planning to control.

Figure 11. Proposed process from planning to control.

 Futuristic machine control in STEP-compliant manufacturing
Mazak’s CAMWARE already successfully integrated their
offline CAMWARE system with Mazak CNC machines,
with Mazak defined CNC features. This shows a feature
based machining approach for STEP-NC is definitely
Downloaded By: [UNAM] At: 17:20 22 May 2008
feasible.
6. Conclusions
This paper provides a theoretical discussion about the
future implementation of the STEP-compliant CNC.
Through comparison of the information flow in the
traditional process chain with that in the STEP-compliant
manufacture scenario, it is recognized that STEP-NC
impacts the CNCs not only on their data interface but
also on their functionality and operation mechanism.
Nonetheless, the so-called STEP-NC controllers may be
implemented at different function levels, of which three
possible implementations are named in this paper respec-
tively as the interfaced, the CAM-embedded and the
intelligent STEP-NC controllers. Through analysis of the
functional requirements of the intelligent STEP-NC con-
troller, it is recognized that the architecture of the
ADACOR agent well fits the basic need of an autonomous
and cooperative STEP-NC controller, and thus a basic
framework for STEP-NC controllers is proposed. With this
framework the STEP-NC controller is organized into two
agents called machining agent and planning agent respec-
tively. From the perspective of practice, this is a great
challenge. Three aspects – part program interpretation, on-
line process planning and feature-based interface between
the two agents – are discussed in this paper. In contrast to
the literature, e.g. the AB–CAM (Newman et al. 2003), the
current paper proposes to solve many of the process issues
at the machine. This paper also proposes to extend the
feature-based approach further into the CNC.
To date, the controller is still under development. Some
parts, e.g. the STEP-compliant part program interpretation
(Liu et al. 2004b), are implemented and some not, e.g. the
feature-based interface between the agents. The hardest
tasks are the real-time planning and the extension of
feature-based methods into the core part of the CNC,
because of the real-time requirement of the machining
process and the lack of feature-based interpolation and
control algorithms.
515
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank National Natural Science
Foundation of China (grant No. 50445004) and Natural
Science Foundation of Shandong (grant No. Y2003F10)
for their support of this research.
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