Generic Machining Sequence Generation Using Enriched Machining Features

The manufacturing processes in today's decentralized manufacturing systems are rather complex, especially at shop floors where highly mixed products in small batch sizes are handled simultaneously. In addition to the fluctuating job shop operations, unpredictable issues like job delay, urgent job insertion, fixture shortage, missing tool, and even machine break-down, are regularly challenging the job shop operations. Targeting the fluctuation, this research proposes a DPP (distributed process planning) approach to generate process plans that are responsive and adaptive to the changes. In this paper, a concept of enriched machining feature is introduced, based on which several rules and algorithms are formulated for generic machining sequence generation. It is expected that the new approach can largely enhance the dynamism of fluctuating job shop operations.
QC 20170904