Considerable attention has been devoted in literature to potential advantages of non linear process plans, i.e. process plans that include parallel and alternative operations. Nevertheless up to now, in industrial practice all part programs have been strictly sequential and expert process planners are going on in developing linear process plans. In order to fill up the existing gap between potential benefits addressed in the literature and industrial practice, the paper proposes a new approach for translating linear strictly sequential process plans into non linear ones. In particular the paper focuses on the description of the AI module that contains all the technological knowledge required in order to relax precedence constraints. The approach, validated on a set of real part programs, has shown to be able to emulate expert process planners' ability in defining alternative process plans.
Flexible Process Plan, Manufacturing System, Expert System
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