Generating Shared-Setups for Enabling Mass Customization

这笔赠款为开发执行多部分规划和生成共享设置的框架提供资金。在这项研究中，不是一次只考虑一个零件来生成工艺计划，而是同时考虑多个零件，并开发共享制造资源的机会。给定的部件集将被分解为与设置兼容的部件集，并且将为每组与设置兼容的部件生成共享设置。这项研究将有助于创建将在整个部件集上进行优化的工艺计划。共享设置将通过使用两步规划方法生成。在第一步中，设置规划算法将确定零件特征对将用于创建该特征的工装和设置施加的约束。在第二步中，将各个零件中的各种特征施加的所有约束聚集在一起，并使用约束驱动的安装规划算法来识别适用于多个零件的共享安装。共享设置还将允许采购适用于多个部件的新工具和夹具。对更加个性化的产品的日益重视和产品寿命的缩短正在导致制造实践的重大变化。随着公司走向大规模定制，他们将需要在车间处理更多种类的产品组合的方法。在批量生产环境中，设置更改占生产时间的主要部分。与当前以零件为中心的安装计划方法相比，计划中的方法有了很大的改进，可用于显著减少安装总数并提高总体吞吐量。如果成功，这项研究的结果将大大减少所需的安装更改数量，并将允许公司处理相当小的批次大小，而每部件成本几乎没有增加。

This grant provides funding for the development of a framework for performing multi-part planning and generating shared-setups. In this research, rather then generating process plans by considering one part at a time, multiple parts will be considered simultaneously and opportunities for sharing manufacturing resources will be exploited. A given set of parts will be broken into sets of setup-compatible parts and shared-setups will be generated for every set of setup-compatible parts. This research will help in creating process plans that will be optimized over the entire set of parts. Shared-setups will be generated by using a two-step planning approach. In the first step, the setup planning algorithm will identify the constraints imposed by a part feature on tooling and setups that will be used to create that feature. In the second step, all the constraints imposed by various features in various parts will be gathered together and a constraint-driven setup planning algorithm will be used to identify the shared-setup that works for multiple parts. Shared-setups will also allow procurement of new tools and fixtures that work for multiple parts. Increasing emphasis on more personalized products and shrinking product lives is resulting in major changes in manufacturing practices. As companies move towards mass customization, they will need ways to handle a wider variety of product mix on shop floors. Setup changes constitute a major portion of the production time in the batch production environment. The planned approach presents a significant improvement over the current part-centric setup planning approaches and can be used to significantly cut down the total number of setups and increase the overall throughput. If successful, the results of this research will significantly reduce the required number of setup changes and will allow companies to handle considerably smaller batch sizes with very little increase in per part cost.