An object-oriented application of tool selection in dynamic process planning

Tool selection is a vital function within any process planning system. This paper presents an approach to computer-aided tool selection that has the ability to generate and rank all alternative tool sets for a process plan. This approach has been used to develop the OATS (Object-oriented Application of Tool Selection) system. OATS is designed for use as a module within a dynamic process planning system and has been tested as a part of the dynamic planning system, PARIS (Process planning Architecture for Integration with Scheduling) (Usher and Fernandes 1996a, b). The necessary input data for this system are taken from a product model based on the ISQ STEP application protocol, AP224. Two alternative plans for a single part are used as examples to illustrate the approach and demonstrate the ability of the system to generate and rank all the viable alternative tool sets.