A novel function block based integration approach to process planning and scheduling with execution control

Abstract

In today's decentralised business environment, manufacturing enterprises are implementing advanced distributed manufacturing planning and control strategies to adapt to and win the fluctuating global market. Within the context, this paper presents a novel approach to the integration of process planning, scheduling and execution in dynamic machining shop floors. Based on the concept of distributed process planning (DPP), function blocks are adopted as information carriers to optimise and specialise the nonlinear process plans (NLPP) progressively throughout the three planning stages: supervisory planning, execution control and operation planning, with scheduling functionality integrated seamlessly. Architecture of DPP and function block based integration are proposed, followed by a system functional design using IDEF0 methodology. The advantages of adopting function block technology are demonstrated and recent research results as well as future directions are pointed out in this paper.