Abstract
The design of manufacturing systems is a wide open area for development and application of decision making and decision support technologies. This domain is characterized by the necessity to combine the standard decision making methods, sophisticated operational research techniques, and some specific rules based on expert knowledge to take into account principal technological constraints and criteria. A promising trend in this area deals with the development of integrated software tools (Brown, 2004; Grieves, 2005; Stark, 2005). Their main idea consists in integrating product and manufacturing data into a common database. This enables product designers to consider the manufacturing processes constraints at the early product design stage. At the same time, all data of product design should be used directly for optimizing the corresponding manufacturing system. That is why the core of these software tools is a powerful extendable database, supported by a user friendly software environment. This database normally contains digital models of product and processes. In order to find an optimal manufacturing system configuration, a set of advanced decision making and decision support methods are used for data processing.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Spindle Head (Spindle Box): A device where several tools are fixed to perform several operations in parallel; all tools of the same spindle head have the same parameters (working stroke, feed per minute) and are activated simultaneously.
Transfer Machine: A machine tool used in the mass production of a unique product or a family of similar products by processing the drilling, boring, milling, and other machining operations in a given order on each part machined.
Physical Layout: An arrangement of pieces of equipment in the production area.
Logical Layout: An assignment of all operations to be executed to pieces of equipment; usually an optimal logical layout is obtained by solving the corresponding line balancing problem.
Feature: A standard element characterized by both technological and geometrical parameters that have meaning in the definition and machining of a part.
Integrated Decision Support Tool for Design of Machining System: A software tool, which includes the functions of part modeling, process planning, logical and physical layouts optimization, and machining system cost estimation. It is used for the preliminary design of the machining systems.
Process Planning: The activity of taking the product design or specification, which is defined in terms of size, shape, tolerances, finish, material properties, and so forth, and transforming it into detailed list of manufacturing instructions such as specifications for materials, processes, sequences, and machining parameters.