Model-based generation of manufacturing process plans through incremental topology formation

Abstract

In advanced manufacturing systems, the production of complex and highly customisable products requires the preparation of many different product specifications and associated manufacturing process plans. The creation of these plans involves the search for the production resources (e.g. robots, machine tools, inspection devices) that are needed to implement the product specifications and how to orchestrate them. We present a model-based approach to the automatic generation of manufacturing process plans from the models of the target products and available resources. The modelling language is based on labelled transition systems, which are useful to represent sequences of operations that can be executed in parallel by multiple production resources. Some preliminary experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the presented approach.