Function-Block Enabled Job Shop Planning and Control With Uncertainty

The objective of this research is to develop a methodology of distributed process planning and its execution control for job shop operations. The manufacturing processes of job shop operations are rather complex, especially at shop floors where highly mixed products in small batch sizes are handled simultaneously. In addition to the fluctuating job shop operations, unpredictable events like job delay, urgent job insertion, fixture shortage, missing tool, and even machine break-down, are regularly challenging the job shop operations. Targeting the fluctuations, this research proposes a DPP (distributed process planning) approach to generate process plans that are responsive and adaptive to the changes. In this paper, a function block enabled approach is introduced. It is expected that the new approach can largely enhance the dynamism of fluctuating job shop operations.Copyright © 2004 by ASME