A real-time computer-aided process planning system as a support tool for economic product design

Abstract A new computer-aided process planning (CAPP) system is presented that serves as a tool for concurrent design of prismatic parts and their manufacturing processes. The system provides timely manufacturing cost feedback to the designer for each added design feature. A hierarchical planning technique, an expert system with a multibank rule base, and a dynamic programming-based optimization module are employed in this real-time process planning system.