A meta-modeling paradigm of the manufacturing resources using mathematical logic for process planning

Process planning determines how to produce the designed products using available manufacturing resources economically; thus the manufacturing resources perform a major part in the field of process planning. Most modeling approaches of the manufacturing resources, however, have been studied to cope with production planning and control problems, or to unleash the under-utilized resource flexibility, etc. As of now there is a lack of the modeling approach for the manufacturing resources on the shop floor to facilitate process planning. The major objective of this research is to create a modeling schema to address the manufacturing resources for process planning, especially for process reasoning. A meta-modeling paradigm of manufacturing resources is proposed using the first- and second-order logic and mapping from process knowledge into the manufacturing resources from the process planning view. The outcomes of this study lay the foundation for process reasoning in future rapid process preparation. Finally, an illustrative example is used to explain the meta-modeling paradigm.