A novel adaptive process planning framework

Today's successful production companies are characterized by factors once neglected, such as, the ability to learn from experience and to flexibly adapt to changes in the environment. In order to significantly improve such qualities, in current research activities a new species of learning and intelligent components is being developed. The capacities of such "gentelligent components" to gather information and to act autonomously offer new potentials for increasing efficiency in production. One of the current concerns is that a big part of manufacturing orders cannot be processed as planned because of disturbance arising after completion of planning activities. This chapter presents a novel approach for the partial integration of process planning and production control, which allows exploiting the potentials of gentelligent components to flexibly react to disturbances in production. © 2006