An investigation of the influence of alternative process plans in a dynamic shop floor environment

Flexibility has become an important characteristic of today's manufacturing industry. Unfortunately, today's standard of using a fixed (linear) process plan is not flexible enough to adapt to different manufacturing system conditions aiming at increasing the system's efficiency. One means to overcome such a limitation is to prepare pre-planned alternatives in the process plan. If this can be easily done and implemented, the most appropriate plan can be selected in real time from all possible alternatives according to the conditions of the shop floor. The objective of the paper is to demonstrate this concept in detail and to discuss the influence of process plan alternatives in a dynamic shop floor environment at equipment level. In order to verify whether the presence of alternatives in process plans increases the efficiency of the manufacturing system, a simulation will be carried out using some example parts currently being manufactured in Penn State's Factory for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME).