GROUP TECHNOLOGY CLASSIFICATION AND CODING SYSTEM-DESIGN - CONSIDERATIONS AND EXTENSION TO ROBOTIC END-OF-ARM-TOOLING

This paper discusses a number of the basic notions associated with the development and implementation of group technology oriented classific ation and coding systems. As well, an example system, designed to perf ormed design retrieval and reference for a subset of tooling required for manufacture, is presented. In particular, this system was develope d for retrieving and referencing the database of robotic end-of-arm-to oling (EOAT) designs. The discussion includes the overall code develop ment strategy, the template for the interactive graphical user interfa ce, and the details of the proposed EOAT classification and code struc ture. The graphics interface and the overall retrieval system were imp lemented on the INTERGRAPH MicroStation environment. These modules wer e written in the C programming language,with prototype development acc omplished on a microcomputer. Finally, examples are used to demonstrat e the capabilities of the system, and discussion concerning implementa tion issues is included.