COMPASS - COMPUTER ORIENTED MATERIALS, PROCESSES, AND APPARATUS SELECTION SYSTEM

Today's competitive manufacturing environment requires a shortened pro duct development time. Although great emphasis has been placed on conc urrent engineering, it is still a challenge for engineers to bridge th e gap between design and manufacturing. This paper proposes a new appr oach to an emerging concept, Meta Planning, which brings manufacturing issues upstream by generating timely and appropriate feedback to desi gn engineers. While a product or feature is being designed, all feasib le downstream manufacturing processes can be compared. A meta planner can be integrated into existing CAD/CAPP/CAM systems to automate high- level process planning such that heterogeneous processes can be organi zed into a coherent plan. COMPASS (Computer Oriented Materials, Proces ses, and Apparatus Selection System), developed as a meta planner, has the basic framework to provide essential information regarding produc tion cost, cycle time, and product quality for all of the candidate pr ocesses. It is a tool that helps design engineers identify potential m anufacturing problems in the earlier stages of product development. Th ree different hole-making process models are implemented in COMPASS to illustrate the mechanism that analyzes and compares different manufac turing processes. Close interaction between design parameters and manu facturing performance for selected processes is demonstrated through a detailed case study involving a single feature.