Cloud-DPP for distributed process planning of mill-turn machining operations

Today, the dynamic market requires manufacturing firms to possess a high degree of adaptability to deal with shop-floor uncertainties. Specifically targeting SMEs active in the metal cutting sector who normally deal with intensive process planning problems, researchers have tried to address the subject. Among proposed solutions, Cloud-DPP elaborates a two-layer distributed adaptive process planning based on function-block technology and cloud concept. One of the challenges of companies is to machine as many part features as possible in a single setup on a single machine. Nowadays, multi-tasking machines are widely used due to their various advantages such as reducing setup times and increasing part accuracy. However, they also possess programming challenges because of their complex configuration and multiple machining functions. This paper reports the latest state of design and implementation of Cloud-DPP methodology to support parts with a combination of milling and turning features, and process planning for multi-tasking machining centers with special functionalities to minimize the number of setups. The contributions of this work are: representation of machining states and part transfer functionality, support of multi-tasking machines in adaptive setup merging, development of special function blocks to handle sub-setups and transitions, and finally generation of function-block network for the merged setups. The developed prototype is validated through a case study.