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.
