Introduction of Process Planning

The product design is the plan for design of the product and its components and subassemblies. To change the product design into a physical entity, a manufacturing plan is required. The action of developing such a plan is called process planning. It is the link among product design and manufacturing. Process planning involves finding the sequence of process and assembly steps that should be accomplished to make the product. It is concerned with the technological and engineering issues of how to make the product and its part. What kinds of equipment and tooling are needed to fabricate the parts and assemble the product? While production planning is concerned with the logistics issues of forming the product.

Process planning involves finding the most suitable manufacturing and assembly processes and the sequence in which they must be accomplished to generate a given part or product according to specifications set forth in the product design documentation. The variety and scope of processes that might be planned are normally limited by the available processing equipment and technological capabilities of the plant or company.

Usually process planning is accomplished by manufacturing engineers or they are also called production engineer, industrial engineer, and process engineer. The process planner should be familiar with the particular manufacturing processes available in the factory and be capable to interpret engineering drawings. Depend on the planner's, skill, knowledge & experience; the processing steps are developed in the most logical sequence to construct each part.

The following factors are considered while preparing the process plan :

1. The functional requirements of the product.

2. Volume of output.

3. The essential operations and their sequence.

4. Tools and equipment essential.

5. Estimated manufacturing time and cost for producing the product.

6. Requirements of tools, labour, etc.

The process planning is mostly concerned with, finding the manufacturing processes, equipments ,sequence of operations,  tools and labour required for the production of a component or a product, coordinating the efforts of all of the factors in manufacturing the product and to furnish a guideline to utilize the existing or the proposed facilities.

Objectives of Process Planning

After learning this unit, you should be able to

• Know what is process planning,
• Make a process plan for any manufacturing system,
• Identify the duties of process planner, and
• Know the advantages and disadvantages of process plan.