An integrated setup planning and pallet configuration approach for highly automated production systems with energy modelling of manufacturing operations

In production environment characterized by frequent changes of the part families demand together with the need of reducing the environmental impact of manufacturing, new solutions of machine tool and production system architectures could result extremely strategic together with process planning activities as a mean to exploit all the resources capabilities. The current work proposes an integrated methodology and a software infrastructure to support the process planning and pallet configuration solutions whose major goal is to minimizing production costs - including costs for energy consumption and cutting tool wear - while maximizing the number of finished workpieces per pallet. © 2012 The Authors.