Coupling product configuration and process planning with constraints

This paper investigates the possibility of coupling together interactive product configuration tools with process planning tools in order to communicate and make consistent decisions made from one side to the other side. In this study, product configuration and process planning are considered as constraints satisfaction problems. The first section introduces the problem and the general ideas of the proposed solution. Then, two constraints based models, respectively relevant to product configuration and process planning, are presented. Finally, first investigations for coupling these two models and associated problems are discussed. An example illustrates our proposal through out the paper.