APPLICATIONS OF GROUP TECHNOLOGY IN DISTRIBUTED MANUFACTURING

This paper discusses the systematic use of group technology (GT) to su pport important activities of distributed manufacturing including desi gn indexing and retrieval, variant design, variant process planning, a nd design critiquing. We introduce an Object-Oriented Group Technology (OOGT) scheme, which captures design data critical to the product's m anufacture. Our approach uses a STEP-based product information model t o generate the OOGT data automatically. The latter are then used to co nduct an efficient search for similar products manufactured by selecte d companies and to retrieve and use information about the manufacturin g processes and performance of these similar products.