The electronics computer-aided process-planning (ECAPP) system is a rule-and frame-based generative process-planning system for the assembly of electronic components onto printed circuit boards (or modu-less). ECAPP uses expert process-engineering knowledge, a manufacturing plant's specific process capabilities, and product information from a computer-aided design (CAD) database to generate all...

This paper presents a simple and novel structure representation supporting the assembly and disassembly planning of electromechanical products. The proposed Relationship Matrix derived from a directed graph represents both the information of the component connectivity and the layout precedence of functional elements. The feasible assembly and disassembly sequences and the minimum service steps ...

The generation of an entry control policy for an assembly plant using a reinforcement learning agent is investigated. The assembly plan studied consists of ten workstations and produces three types of products. The objective of the entry control policy is to produce a given production mix within a planning horizon, while following a given production mix. Due to the large state space, a function...

Multiple-view feature modelling is used in concurrent engineering. A shortcoming of current implementations is that they can only support low-level geometry-based product development phases, because they use form feature models. In order to overcome this shortcoming, we will use enhanced feature models, which are built from features that are defined as an aspect of a product that has some funct...

This paper describes the XAP/1 assembly planning system. It begins by comparing the version of the assembly planning problem addressed by the XAP/1 system to other systems in terms of the range of operations allowed in plans, the degree of detail in which plans are described, the type of input data required, and the degree of optimization done on plans. The XAP/1 system is strongly oriented tow...

CAD and animation systems offer a variety of techniques for designing and animating arbitrary movements of rigid bodies. Such tools are essential for planning, analyzing, and demonstrating assembly and disassembly procedures of manufactured products. In this paper, we advocate the use of screw motions for such applications, because of their simplicity, flexibility, uniqueness, and computational...

The Face-to-Face Composition (FFC) Model is a modular, boundary-based description of an object. The Assembly AND/OR graph proposed by Homem de Mello and Sanderson for task planning is an efficient data structure showing all possible assembly sequences. It can be obtained directly from the FFC model by a sequence of component-merging operations.

In modern production systems, customized mass production of complex products, such as automotive or white goods, is often realized at assembly lines with a high degree of manual labor. For firms that apply assembly systems the assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) arises, which is to assign optimally tasks to stations or workers with respect to some constraints and objectives. Although the lit...

This paper describes our experiences in using our plan validation tool, VAL, in the development of a mixed-initiative plan construction tool intended to support space operations planning. VAL was initially developed to support the 3rd International Planning Competition (IPC), but has subsequently been extended in order to exploit its capabilities in plan validation and development. In particula...

This paper addresses motion planning of a homogeneous modular robotic system. The modules have self-reconfiguration capability so that a group of the modules can construct a robotic structure generating dynamic motion. Motion planning for self-reconfiguration is not straightforward because the modular structure allows many combinatorial configurations, and also the proposed module has only two ...