Process Planning

In companies, planning processes can result in increased output, higher

precision, and faster turnaround for vital business tasks. A process is described

as a set of steps that result in a specific outcome. It converts input into output.

Process planning is also called manufacturing planning, material processing,

process engineering, and machine routing. It is the act of preparing detailed work

instructions to produce a part. It is a complete description of specific stages in the

production process. Process planning determines how the product will be

produced or service will be provided. Process planning converts design

information into the process steps and instructions to powerfully and effectively

manufacture products. As the design process is supported by many computer-

aided tools, computer-aided process planning (CAPP) has evolved to make

simpler and improve process planning and realize more effectual use of

manufacturing resources.
Process
Planning 

It has been documented that process planning is required for new product and

services. It is the base for designing factory buildings, facility layout and selecting

production equipment. It also affects the job design and quality control.

Objective of Process Planning: The chief of process planning is to augment

and modernize the business methods of a company. Process planning is planned

to renovate design specification into manufacturing instructions and to make

products within the function and quality specification at the least possible costs.

This will result in reduced costs, due to fewer staff required to complete the same

process, higher competence, by eradicating process steps such as loops and

bottlenecks, greater precision, by including checkpoints and success measures

employees to fulfil their department objectives. Process planning deals with the

selection of the processes and the determination of conditions of the processes.

The particular operations and conditions have to be realised in order to change

raw material into a specified shape. All the specifications and conditions of

operations are included in the process plan. The process plan is a certificate

such as engineering drawing. Both the engineering drawing and the process plan

present the fundamental document for the manufacturing of products. Process

planning influences time to market and productions cost. Consequently the

planning activities have immense importance for competitive advantage.

Effect of process planning on competitive

Principles of Process Planning

achieve those outputs.

2. Describe the goals of the process, and assess them frequently to make

sure they are still appropriate. This would include specific measures like

quality scores and turnaround times.

3. When mapped, the process should appear as a logical flow, without

loops back to earlier steps or departments.

4. Any step executed needs to be included in the documentation. If not, it

should be eliminated or documented, depending on whether or not it's

necessary to the process.

5. People involved in the process should be consulted, as they often have

the most current information.

Process planning includes the activities and functions to develop a

comprehensive plans and instructions to produce a part. The planning starts with

engineering drawings, specifications, parts or material lists and a forecast of

demand. The results of the planning are routings which specify operations,

operation sequences, work centres, standards, tooling and fixtures. This routing

becomes a major input to the manufacturing resource planning system to define

operations for production activity control purposes and define required resources

for capacity requirements planning purposes.

instructions including dimensions linked to individual operations, machining

parameters, set-up instructions, and quality assurance checkpoints. Process

plans results in fabrication and assembly drawings to support manufacture and

annual process planning is based on a manufacturing engineer's experience and

knowledge of production facilities, equipment, their capabilities, processes, and

tooling. But process planning is very lengthy and the results differ based on the

person doing the planning.

Major steps in process planning: Process planning has numerous steps to

complete the project that include the definition, documentation, review and

improvement of steps in business processes used in a company.

Definition: The first step is to describe what the process should accomplish. It

includes queries like, what is the output of this process? Who receives the

output, and how do they define success?, What are the inputs for the process?,

Are there defined success measures in place - such as turnaround time or quality

scores? And Are there specific checkpoints in the process that need to be

addressed?

Documentation: During the documentation stage, interviews are conducted with

company personnel to determine the steps and actions they take as part of a

specific business process. The results of these interviews is written down,

These flow charts are given to the involved departments to review, to make sure

information has been correctly captured in the chart.

Review: Next, the flow charts are reviewed for potential problem areas.

Process planning in manufacturing may include the following activities:

1. Selection of raw-stock,

2. Determination of machining methods,

3. Selection of machine tools,

4. Selection of cutting tools,

5. Selection or design of fixtures and jigs,

6. Determination of set-up,

7. Determination of machining sequences,

8. Calculations or determination of cutting conditions,

9. Calculation and planning of tool paths,

10. Processing the process plan

Computer Aided Process Planning

computerize process planning in the following five stages:

Stage I - Manual classification; standardized process plans

Stage III - Variant CAPP

Stage IV - Generative CAPP

Stage V - Dynamic, generative CAPP

Earlier to CAPP, producers attempted to triumph over the issues of manual

process planning by basic categorization of parts into families and developing

standardized process plans for parts families that is called

Stage I. When a new part is initiated, the process plan for that family would be

manually recovered, marked-up and retyped. While this improved output but it

did not enhance the quality of the planning of processes.

Computer-aided process planning originally developed as a device to

electronically store a process plan once it was shaped, recover it, amend it for a

new part and print the plan. It is called

Stage II. Other ability of this stage is table-driven cost and standard estimating

systems.

Stage III: Computer-aided approach of variant CAPP is based on a Group

Technology coding and classification approach to recognize huge number of part

attributes or parameters. These attributes permit the system to choose a baseline

process plan for the part family and achieve about ninety percent of the planning
work. The schemer will add the remaining ten percent of the effort modifying or

fine-tuning the process plan. The baseline process plans stored in the computer

are manually entered using a super planner concept that is, developing

standardized plans based on the accumulated experience and knowledge of

multiple planners and manufacturing engineers.

Stage IV: It is generative CAPP. In this stage, process planning decision rules

are developed into the system. These decision rules will work based on a part's

group technology or features technology coding to produce a process plan that

will require minimal manual interaction and modification.

While CAPP systems move towards being generative, a pure generative system

that can create a complete process plan from part classification and other design

data is a goal of the future. These types of generative system will utilize artificial

intelligence type capabilities to produce process plans as well as be fully

integrated in a CIM environment. An additional step in this stage is dynamic,

generative CAPP which would consider plant and machine capacities, tooling

availability, work center and equipment loads, and equipment status in

developing process plans.

The process plan developed with a CAPP system at Stage V would differ in due

course depending on the resources and workload in the factory. Dynamic,

generative CAPP also entails the need for online display of the process plan on a
work order oriented basis to cover that the appropriate process plan was

provided to the floor.

There are numerous advantages of this type of process planning. It can decrease

the skill required of a planner. It can reduce the process planning time. It can

reduce both process planning and manufacturing cost. It can create more

consistent plans. It can produce more accurate plans. It can increase

productivity. Automated process planning is done for shortening the lead-time,

manufacturability feedback, lowering the production cost and consistent process

plans. Advantages of Computer-aided Process Planning include reduced

demand on the skilled planner, reduced process planning time, reduced process

planning and manufacturing cost, created more consistent plans, produced

accurate plans, increased productivity, increased high flexibility, attained high

efficiency, attained adequate high product quality and possibility of integration

with the other automated functions and systems.

Manufacturing Process Planning delivers essential process planning potential for

all manufacturing industries. Using Manufacturing Process Planning, process

planners can powerfully create and authenticate the original process plan using

the product structure from product engineering, modify the plan to specific

requirements, and link products and resources to the steps of the plan.
To summarize, Process Planning is important action in a production enterprise

that verifies which processes, materials, and instructions will be used to produce

a product. Process planning describes a manufacturing facility, processes and

parameters which are to be used to change materials from a primary form to a

predetermined final stage.