From automation toward integration of process planning: a state-of-the-art review

Abstract

The two main objective functions for designing the manufacturing system are, improving the manufacturing system's productivity and production quality. Process planning is an integral part of manufacturing system design. In this work, the study of process plan evolution over the period has been reviewed, keeping in mind the design objectives. Based on the technological advancements, the process plan evolution has been classified into two periods. The first evolution relates to automation, in which efforts are made to automate the manual activities of conventional process plans, which leads to the development of Computer-Aided Process Planning (CAPP). As long as the systems are deterministic with fixed structures and capabilities, CAPP is a good solution. Due to the uncertainty in the market for product demand, the new manufacturing systems are becoming more and more dynamic to handle the product variety demand. In that case, just automation is not enough to achieve the objective functions of system design. Designers have to consider the integration of the manufacturing system life cycle. So the second evolution of the process plan relates to, the consideration of performance indicators defined due to the system integration. For the second evolution, the literature review of the reconfigurable process plan (RPP) is performed considering both automation and integration of the system.