NEURO-FUZZY NETWORKS IN CAPP

The neuro-fuzzy network (NFN) is used to model the rules and experience of the process planner. NFN is to select the manufacturing operations sequences for the part features. A detailed description of the NFN system development is given. The rule structure utilizes sigmoid functions to fuzzify the inputs, multiplication to combine the if Part of the rules and summation to integrate the fired rules. Expert knowledge from previous process Plans is used in determinning the initial network structure and parameters of the membership functions. A back-propagation (BP) training algorithm was developed to fine tune the knowledge to company standards using the input-output data from executions of previous plans. The method is illustrated by an industrial example.