Patent Application
20070106410
This invention relates generally to information technology, and more particularly, to systems and methods for production planning in manufacturing processes.
Complex manufacturing projects such as the design and manufacture of aircraft generally require that engineering information, component parts and processes be successfully integrated. With regard in particular to the production of aircraft, typically hundreds of thousands of parts and associated processes must be successfully integrated according to a comprehensive plan to produce an aircraft in accordance with the engineering information.
Engineering information typically includes engineering drawings and parts lists that cooperatively form an engineering product plan that describes how materials, components assemblies and sub-assemblies must be combined to form the desired product. A manufacturing process plan is subsequently compiled so that the identified parts in the desired product may be properly scheduled for assembly on the factory floor. Suitable scheduling and coordination is particularly important in complex projects since factors such as the overall cost of the project, the time required for completion of the project, and the risk of failure must be accurately estimated. In addition, other variables of importance such as the overall efficiency of the project need to be accurately estimated. Accordingly, the manufacturing process plan typically includes factory floor planning, tool planning and scheduling, compilation of work plans for assembly personnel, assembly plans, and other similar activities.
Although existing process planning and analysis methods are useful, they nevertheless exhibit several drawbacks, and thus may not accurately represent a selected process. For example, the planned configuration, as expressed in the manufacturing process plan may require assembly of the product in a sequence not contemplated by the designed configuration, as expressed in the engineering process plan. Since existing methods generally do not permit variability in tasks or resources in the process to be effectively resolved, conflicts that arise during the product assembly must often be resolved informally on the factory floor, which in turn, often requires expensive and time-consuming rework.
What is needed in the art is a process planning system and method that permits realistic evaluation of a production process, so that production planning and engineering design may be more accurately performed.
The present invention comprises systems and methods for production planning by visualizing products and resources in a manufacturing environment. In one aspect, a system for production planning includes a first database configured to retain engineering information for a selected article of manufacture, and a second database configured to retain process information for the selected article. A processor is provided that receives a selected portion of the engineering information from the first database and a selected portion of the process information from the second database and combines the selected portions to generate a temporal graphical view of a selected portion of the article.
Embodiments of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the following drawings.
The present invention relates to systems and methods for production planning in a manufacturing process. Many specific details of certain embodiments of the invention are set forth in the following description and in
The apparatus 10 also includes a process information database 16 that is operable to store process-related information for the product generated in the manufacturing process. Briefly and in general terms, the process information database 16 may include part resource and planning relationships for a selected component part or assembly. In particular, the planning relationships may include precedence networks that describe a predetermined assembly sequence for a component part or assembly. In the present discussion, a precedence network is a multi-dependency representation of a project that includes the various activities in the project depicted as nodes, and further includes sequence elements that express at least a temporal relationship between the various nodes. In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the process structures may include data structures that are created as disclosed in a co-pending and commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/012,901 filed on Dec. 15, 2004, entitled “System and Method for Production Planning Analysis Using Discrete Event Simulation”, which application is incorporated by reference herein. Although
With continued reference to
The apparatus 10 includes a storage device 22 that receives processed information from the processing unit 12, which will be described in greater detail below. Alternately, the storage device 22 may also serve as an intermediate storage location for information generated by the processor 12 before the information is transferred to one or more information requesters 20.
The operation of the apparatus 10 of
For example, in one particular embodiment, and with reference to aircraft production, hydraulics, fuel and electrical systems, and structural design may generally be executed and planned by different organizations that may develop respective designs and planning information with minimal mutual interaction. Accordingly, one or more conflicts may result during integration of the foregoing systems and structures designs. For example, at a selected integration step, it may be determined that the assembly must be partially disassembled in order to permit the installation of other systems and/or structural components because the prior integration steps were not properly ordered. Further, at the selected integration step, it may become apparent that sufficient access is not present to admit a tool and/or a hand to effect the integration step, due to an error in the design of a system and/or a structural component. Accordingly, the context information generated within the processor 12 includes two and/or three-dimensional digital models (e.g., models created using the CATIA digital modeling system, or other similar modeling systems) that may be retrieved from the product information database 14 that are selectively combined with information in the process information database 16 to provide a graphical view of an assembly at a selected integration step. Thus, if conflicts are observed in the context information, the product information (stored in database 14) and/or the process information (stored in database 16) the information may be readily altered to specify a different design and/or assembly sequence to avoid the observed conflicts. Accordingly, conflicts between the product, process and resource definitions may be advantageously resolved prior to the release of the foregoing definitions.
As further shown in
On the basis of the foregoing review of the contexts 36, revised information may be introduced into at least one of the product information source 32 and the process information source 34, so that a revised plurality of the contexts 36 may be generated and evaluated. The evaluation of the contexts 36 may proceed by visually examining each of the contexts 36 under various selected viewing conditions. For example, and in one selected embodiment, selected portions of the assembly may be highlighted using a desired color while other portions of the assembly are uniformly presented in a contrasting color, so that the selected portion may be clearly viewed. In another specific embodiment, the selected portions of the assembly may be desirably highlighted, while other portions are viewed as “grayed” with lower contrast than the highlighted portions.
Still other specific embodiments of processes for visual examination are possible. For example, the selected portion of the assembly may be viewed using a minimum viewing option that shows all of the structure and processes that have occurred in a preceding path (as expressed, for example, in a precedence network corresponding to the assembly). Conversely, a maximum viewing option would be operable to provide a comprehensive view that includes not only a preceding path, but contributions from parallel paths in the precedence network also. Contexts may also be selectively viewed by applying a filter to the context that is based upon certain selected attributes of the assembly so that selected portions of the context may be viewed. Filtering the context advantageously permits a viewer to remove extraneous detail and view only the data that is relevant to the viewer. The context may also be viewed dynamically, so that selected portions of the context may be viewed in a desired position. For example, the context may be viewed in a position that is oriented in approximately about the same position that would obtain in the actual assembly. Accordingly, a viewer of the context may conveniently review ergonomic positions of an individual effecting the assembly, tool clearances available to the individual, and other similar details.
Still referring to
Embodiments of methods and systems in accordance with the present invention may be implemented on a variety of computing hardware platforms. For example,
The system 400 embodiment shown in
As further shown in
In one aspect, a machine-readable medium may be used to store a set of machine-readable instructions (e.g. a computer program) into the computer 402, wherein the machine-readable instructions embody a method of performing manufacturing operations in accordance with the teachings of the present invention. The machine-readable medium may be any type of medium which can store data that is readable by the computer 402, including, for example, a floppy disk, CD ROM, optical storage disk, magnetic tape, flash memory card, digital video disk, RAM, ROM, or any other suitable storage medium. The machine-readable medium, or the instructions stored thereon, may be temporarily or permanently installed in any desired component of the system 400, including, for example, the I/O component 408, the memory component 406, and the auxiliary output device 426. Alternately, the machine-readable instructions may be implemented directly into one or more components of the computer 402, without the assistance of the machine-readable medium.
In operation, the computer 402 may be configured to perform one or more of the aspects of the methods of manufacturing described above. For example, an operator 430 may input a command through the command input device 424 to cause the computer to retrieve product information from the first portion 413 of the data base 412 and process information from the second portion 414 of the data base 412. The computer 402 may then use a set of software instructions stored in the computer 402 (e.g. in the memory component 406) that performs one or more aspects of the methods of manufacturing described above on the product and process information, and may then transmit processed information to the third portion 415 of the data base 412. Alternately, one or more aspects of the various processes described above may be implemented in the computer 402 using any suitable programmable or semi-programmable hardware components (e.g. EPROM components).
Results of the processes performed by the computer 402 in accordance with one or more embodiments of the invention may be transmitted via the data bus 410 to the I/O component 408. The results may also be transmitted to the control component 420 and to the auxiliary output device 426 via the second and third communications links 418 and 428. The operator 430 may view the results of the one or more methods on the control monitor 422, and may take appropriate action, including revising analysis parameters and inputs, and continuing or repeating the one or more embodiments of analysis methods using different product and process information as desired.
It will be appreciated that embodiments of the present invention may be used to manufacture a wide variety of products, and the invention is not limited to the particular embodiments and products described above. For example,
It will be appreciated that systems and methods in accordance with the present invention may be utilized in the fabrication of any number of components 902 of the aircraft 900, including, for example, the various components and sub-components of the tail assembly 908, the wing assemblies 906, the fuselage 905, the propulsion units 904, and any other suitable portion of the aircraft 900. Of course, embodiments of the present invention may also be used to manufacture the aircraft 900 in its entirety.
Although the aircraft 900 shown in
It may also be appreciated that alternate embodiments of apparatus and methods in accordance with the present invention may be utilized in the manufacture of a wide variety of other products, including, for example, boats, ships, missiles, automobiles and other vehicles, buildings, or any other suitable products or assemblies. Embodiments of systems and methods in accordance with the present invention may improve the efficiencies and accuracies of manufacturing processes, and may reduce costs associated with product design and manufacture in comparison with prior art systems and methods.
While various embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described, as noted above, many changes can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the scope of the invention is not limited by the disclosure of the various embodiments. Instead, the invention should be determined entirely by reference to the claims that follow.
