Evaluation and Indexing of Process Plans Based on Electrical Demand and Energy Consumption

This paper presents the concept of including the energy cost as a part of the total cost of manufacturing using machining processes in the development of computer aided process plans. The research objective is to index and evaluate the process plans based upon the energy consumption of the machining operations while considering machining cost and to rank or index the process plans based on energy consumption for purposes of decision support in process plan selection. The paper also discusses energy evaluation of process plans and their subsequent effectiveness in terms of overall cost associated with the utilization of effective machining parameters. The MPSEL system, which is an expert system based application, was used to develop alternative process plans. The MACH program, which is a spreadsheet based system, was used to determine the cost associated with machining. The developed process plans are compared based upon the cost associated with utilized energy and machining.