Virtual reality-based approach to manufacturing process planning

Increasing the quality and flexibility of manufacturing process planning is very important to achieve productivity improvements and speed up the design cycle. The emphasis on versatility and intelligence leads to new challenges such as intelligent design and concurrent work. Such goals can be accomplished by using virtual reality technology. An overview is given of a concept of a virtual reality-based manufacturing and layout planning system that is being developed under the author's responsibility. Acknowledgements Important parts of the system, especially the user interface and programming, were developed by the students D. Kleine and R. Pieczka.