Domain-Specific Modelling of Micro Manufacturing Processes for the Design of Alternative Process Chain

In the context of an industrial production of micro components, the planning and configuration of process chains constitutes a major factor of success for the involved companies. Besides very small tolerances and high quality requirements, high production speeds have to be achieved. Moreover, so called size-effects introduce additional uncertainties to the planning process. While the modelling methodology “Micro Process Planning and Analysis” provides a series of tools and methods to achieve a detailed planning and configuration of process chains in micro manufacturing, the high level of detail requires a comparably large amount of manual work, as well as a broad knowledge about available processes. Moreover, several processes can be substituted to achieve specific forms and shapes, while providing their own advantages and disadvantages for the overall production system. This article describes an extension to the methodology, which enables an automatic selection of suitable processes using geometry focused annotations. While these annotations only add minor efforts to the modelling process, they can be used to automatically derive alternative process chains. Particularly for production systems offering a broad range of processes, this extension reduces the manual effort in modelling and evaluating alternative process chains.