Manufacturing process modeling method for CAD/CAM and flexible manufacturing systems

Knowledge based automation of the manufacturing process planning is an evergreen problem area of integrated design and planning (CAD/CAM) systems as well as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). The authors propose a Petri net and rule based modeling method for manufacturing process planning. The generic nature of this model makes it possible to handle all of the process variants. The model is then evaluated by process planning and production scheduling procedures. Models are created on the basis of data of form features oriented part model and manufacturing environment. Petri net objects are created using manufacturing process objects and process structure information. The paper is organized as follows: First the aims of the research are outlined and the characteristics of manufacturing process models of this type are summarized. Next, the method of modeling, the structure of the process model and the process model entities are detailed. Following this, a generation procedure of the process model is presented. Finally, an example of process model is explained.