A heuristic approach for automated process sequencing in CAPP

Process sequencing is a very complicated task. A series of operations done on a single machine can be sequenced in many different ways and still produce the part. However, some sequences are better in terms of costs than others. The problem then is to determine these more efficient sequences. This paper proposes one heuristic approach which minimizes the setup times. Constraints are used to determine which machine, fixture, and tool setup should be machined first. Then the constraints can sequence the order in the same tool setup