Process Planning for Reconfigurable Manufacturing System for Mould/Die Making

For efficient manufacture of moulds and dies and in order to meet the unstable market situation, a well organised reconfigurable manufacturing system is required. The geometric features of moulds and dies are not the same as discrete parts. They are contained elements on a block of steel and are usually in the form of contours, slots, corners, slope faces, curved surfaces and cavities. A lot of techniques are found in literature for process planning of manufacturing system of discrete parts but that of bodies similar to moulds and dies are quite rare. In this research, different techniques from literature are combined to form the process planning of a reconfigurable manufacturing system for mould and die making, which may also be applicable to similarly complex bodies. A technique was developed based on the weight of precedence factors to form a machining precedence order, which can be used to formulate the route sheet that is unique for manufacturing of moulds and dies and other similar complex bodies. A reconfigurable machine layout in which the developed process planning can be applied is also developed. Keywords-process planning; mould and die; manufacturing system; precedence; machine cell.