Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Video series: Creating a class diagram in Umple of a simple manufacturing plant controller system

Since I am at the Models Conference in Austria, I had to cancel my SEG2105 class. I decided to present my lecture through a series of YoutTube videos.

The video series, which can be seen here, starts with analysing a simple description of a manufacturing plant by highlighting parts of the text that may represent classes, associations and attributes. Then I use Umple Online to create the class diagram step-by-step.

The original description of the manufacturing plant comes from my book, and is reproduced below


This system will be used to manage and control the production processes at Use Case Industries’ manufacturing plant. The plant makes several types of mechanical devices. It has 10 assembly lines, each of which can be used in the manufacturing of any of its products. An assembly line is allocated to a product for a fixed period of time (anywhere from a few hours to a few days) – this is called a product run. During a product run, the assembly line makes a specified number of units of the product.

Each product is assembled in several steps. As the product-under- construction moves down the assembly line, it will be worked on in turn by a series of robots. Each robot completes one step before the product moves on to the next step (and a different robot). Each robot is dedicated to just one manufacturing step.

Each product is composed of parts. Parts may be bought from suppliers, or they may in fact be smaller products that are built by this company (in earlier product runs). In each manufacturing step, a given subset of these parts is put together. Parts waiting for assembly are kept in numbered bins; the robots know which bins to go to in order to get the required parts.

Each completed assembly is given a serial number. When orders for products are filled, the serial numbers of the products sold are recorded with the order.