Development of an Integrated Process Planning/Production Scheduling Shell for Agile Manufacturing

Abstract

As companies increase the level of customization in their products, move towards smaller lot production and experiment with more flexible customer/supplier arrangements such as those made possible by Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), they increasingly require the ability to (1) quickly, accurately and competitively respond to customer requests for bids on new products and (2) rapidly and effectively work out supplier/subcontractor arrangements for these new products. This in turn requires the ability to (1) rapidly convert standard-based product specifications into process plans and machine operations and (2) quickly integrate process plans for new orders into the existing production schedule to best accommodate the current load of the facility, the status and allocation of machines, fixtures and tools, and the availability of raw materials. This paper summarizes initial work towards the development of an Integrated Process Planning/Production Scheduling (IP3S) Shell for Agile Manufacturing. The IP3S Shell is designed around an innovative blackboard architecture that emphasizes (1)concurrent development and dynamic revision of integrated process planning/production scheduling solutions, (2) the use of a common representation for exchanging process planning and production scheduling information, (3) coordination with outside information sources such as customer and supplier sites, and (4) mixed initiative decision support, enabling the user to interactively explore a number of tradeoffs. The system is scheduled for initial demonstration in a large and highly dynamic machine shop at Raytheon's Andover manufacturing facility.