IMPROVING THE AVAILABILITY OF MANUFACTURABILITY INFORMATION THROUGH DECENTRALIZATION OF PROCESS PLANNING

Abstract

Process planning is part of the general product development and production process that usually follows design andprecedes manufacturing. Manufacturability and process planning information in general play central role in manyproduct development and production activities, including paradoxically, conceptual and detail design - the activitiesthat take place before process planning. The need of conducting some of the process planning activities formallybefore or during design is thus rather obvious. One of the main research issues is therefore the identification of theprocess planning activities that can be performed before the traditional process planning phase and handling of theprocess planning information so as to adequately provide the designers with the manufacturability informationneeded during conceptual and detail design. Another issue is how to support collaboration during process planningand how to maintain continuity of the process planning tasks. This paper suggests the decentralization of the processplanning task and proposes the execution of the process planning activities in a piecemeal fashion, starting right afterreceiving an order and specifying the requirements for a product. Process planning under the proposed procedureconsists of six semi-autonomous sub-phases, some of which comprise activities that must be conducted prior to theprocess planning phase. This helps to overcome the problem of timely availability of manufacturability informationduring the execution of upstream and downstream product development and production activities. The paper alsoproposes a computer-based method of handling the manufacturability information generated in various stages of theproduct development and production process. A database design and structure of prototype software that managesthe process planning information are presented and discussed. Furthermore, a case study conducted to explore howthe proposed process planning procedure could be put in use is presented and discussed.