Abstract Industry 4.0 has transformed manufacturing processes to be more reliant on computers. In this Industry 4.0 era, there is a growing demand for increased automation and digitization. Due to intense competition within the manufacturing sector and the ever-changing customer market, companies are compelled to adopt the principles of Industry 4.0 in their operations. In this paper, an artificial intelligence-based setup planning system is developed to generate minimum number of setups of prismatic parts to produce on 3-axis and 4-axis milling machines. The CAD of the prismatic part is given as input to IMPlanner (Intelligent Manufacturing Planner) system to map the features and generate alternate processes. The Rule Based-Setup Planning system (RB-SPS Expert System) uses the input from IMPlanner to automatically generate minimum number of setups for 3-axis and 4-axis milling machines, which supports industry 4.0. The important constraints - feature precedence and tolerance relations have been considered to create setup plan. The case studies are presented to demonstrate the capabilities and integration between the various modules of the system.
Wakhare et al. (Thu,) studied this question.