Generation and Evaluation of Alternative Operation

This paper presents a new and systematic approach to assist decision-making in selecting machining operation sequences. The approach is to produce alternative interpretations of design as different collections of machinable features, use these interpretations to generate alternative machining operation sequences, and evaluate the cost and achievable machining accuracy of each operations sequence. Given the operation sequences and their evaluations, it is then possible to calculate the performance measures of interest, and use these performance measures to select, from among the various alternatives, one or more of them that can best balance the need for a quality product against the need for efficient machining.