Abstract
Capabilities and complexity of manufacturing systems are increasing and striving for an integrated manufacturing environment. Availability of alternative process plans is a key factor for integration of design, process planning and scheduling. This paper describes a methodology for generation of alternative process plans by extending the existing framework of the process plan network. An incomplete search algorithm is developed for generating and searching the process plan network. This algorithm is applicable to large and enormous process plan network and also to expand different areas based on the user requirement. The algorithm can generate alternative process plans and optimize them based on the objective function.
