| 20110130855 | TEMPLATE FRAMEWORK FOR AUTOMATED PROCESS ROUTING - In accordance with an embodiment of the invention, there is provided a method for determining an optimum manufacturing process routing. The method comprises electronically constructing a plurality of manufacturing process routings for a component to be manufactured. The electronically constructing for each manufacturing process routing of the plurality of manufacturing process routings comprises defining a recursive process routing tree for each manufacturing process routing, the recursive process routing tree comprising a plurality of nodes, each node of the plurality of nodes corresponding to a manufacturing process and comprising a branch node when the manufacturing process for a given node may be decomposed into a plurality of sub-processes for the given node. The method further comprises electronically determining an optimum process routing of the plurality of manufacturing process routings by evaluating each recursive process routing tree for the plurality of manufacturing process routings with reference to an electronic process routing variable to be optimized and determining the optimum process routing that minimizes the electronic process routing variable to be optimized. The electronic process routing variable to be optimized may be a cost for manufacturing the component, a production time for manufacturing the component, or a capacity used for manufacturing the component. | 06-02-2011 |
