Modelling of manufacturing activities by process planning knowledge representation

Abstract

Process planning is one of the key activities for product design and manufacturing. Impact of process plans on all phases of product design and manufacture requires high level of interaction of different activities and tight integration of them into coherent system. In this paper we describe a model for manufacturing activities that allows integration. The framework for integration is briefly described and the manufacturing process model that considers three dimensions of planning is explained, Than an object-oriented knowledge representation approach is presented with module for parts modeling and module for generation of process plan. Description of machining process entities and their relationships with features, machines and tools are provided. The benefits of the proposed representation, which include connection with geometric model, reduced search space and alternative plan generation, are discussed. These new contributions provide for a new generation of CAPP systems that can be adapted for various manufacturing systems and can be integrated with other CIM modules.