Abstract
We urgently need to develop the next generation of automotive technology to support energy conservation and the global environment. For this we need an advancement of the Laboratory Automation System (LAS). However, restructuring the hardware and software of the LAS requires enormous amount of time and costs.
To solve the problems of the LAS development, we formed a user-vendor working group, which then established the common rules of LAS named IMACS (Integrated Measurement And Control System). IMACS are software-centered rules, characterized by the stratification of LAS and the interface called software parts.
So far, we have integrated IMACS into five engineering fields. A total of 11 testing machine vendors participated in the development. We manufactured about 350 software parts and made their specifications openly available.
As the next step, we are collecting software parts by deleting redundant functions. This requires comparison of the function of the software parts and the standardization of the Operation and Management Part.
For further development of IMACS we also studied the application of IMACS to smaller systems.
We have thus far carried out activities related to the development of IMACS as a TOYOTA Standard. In the future, we intend to strengthen IMACS for possible thorough applications by overcoming tasks including the standardization of Operation and Management Parts and the application of IMACS to small-scale systems.