Reconfigurable machining process planning for part variety in new manufacturing paradigms: Definitions, models and framework

Conventional machining process planning approaches are inefficient to handle the process planning complexity induced by part variety. Reconfigurable process planning is a new process planning approach which has been well recognized as a key enabler for current manufacturing paradigms. However, in the literature, there is neither a comprehensive part variety representation model to support reconfigurable process planning nor a global solution framework to instruct the generation of the feasible process plans for a specific part variant. Therefore, this paper extends the concept of reconfigurable process planning to a concept of reconfigurable machining process planning which targets the process plan generation for a part family. A solution framework is developed for reconfigurable machining process planning. In this framework, a feature-based part variety model is proposed to represent a part family; A reconfigurable machining process plan is defined as a set of modular components which can be configured/reconfigured into the machining process plans for any part variant in the family; a novel configuration approach is proposed to generate the process plan components for a specific part variant while configuring this part variant from the family. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed framework and models are tested in a real case study.