Process Planning Support System for Green Manufacturing and its application

Abstract

Owing to a lack of practical methods and software tools in the existing researches on green manufacturing (GM), process planning support system for green manufacturing (GMPPSS) was developed to deal with the problems in optimization of environment-benign process planning. The GMPPSS consisted mainly of three function modules and related model repositories including: selection of process elements, optimization of process courses, and evaluation of process projects for GM. The database of the GMPPSS was used to provide plentiful information on resources consumption and environmental impact in manufacturing processes, which consisted of process attribute database, inventory database, machine database, tool database, and the cutting fluid database. Raw materials, secondary material consumption, energy consumption, and environment impacts of process planning were optimized to improve the green attribute of process planning of parts with the supports of the databases and model repositories. The gear processing in the machining tool factory was presented to verify the system s applicability.