An XML-based implementation of manufacturing route sheet documents for context-sensitive and web-based process planning

Abstract

Web-based process planning is an internet application for distributed and knowledge-sharing process planning providing important support for virtual enterprises. Route sheet documents are widely adopted as user interfaces for information input, output, browsing, sharing and integration. In traditional applications, data and their presentation in specially formatted route sheet documents are implemented together. Separation of data and their presentation is emphasized in this paper because not only can it provide multi-level and multi-orientation views of the same data, but it can also improve context-sensitivity in process planning by better information sharing. An eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based method for route sheet presentation and implementation is proposed to support context-sensitive and web-based process planning. The route sheet document includes a declarative user interface, a tree-style data structure, and processing rules embedded in documents to support context-sensitive information processing. An XML application named Manufacturing Process XML (MPXML) was developed as a meta-language for description of manufacturing process information.

Keywords:

• XML
• Context-sensitive
• Route sheet document
• Process planning
• CAPP
• Web-based manufacture

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program).