Enhanced Product Design for Generative Process Planning

Abstract Product design and process planning are important stages of the product lifecycle because they mainly determine the success or failure of a new product. Process planning, which is linking design and production phase, causes most of the resulting production costs. Gashed application landscapes, heterogenic systems and consequently different inconsistent product data models are preventing an efficient product development especially across different stages of the product lifecycle (Sharma and Gao (2006)). This results in increased error-proneness, higher development effort, misinterpretations and miscalculations. For generative process planning e.g. for an exact quotation generation and continuously initializing the production after procurement, we utilize a completely computer-interpretable design model for products based on machining parts. Therefore, the design model provides semantics about the geometric information which is necessary for reasoning required manufacturing operations for automatic process planning. Furthermore, the design model includes complete product information which can be reused and extended during later product lifecycle stages. For continuous system integration and consistent product data representation we are utilizing the ISO standard 10303. Based on these aspects, we present our approach for generating process plans directly from a given product description by retrieving and evaluating various process plans while considering the entire manufacturing environment.