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Each of these three activities are discussed in detail in the following
Sections.
Manufacturing capabilities are captured using the Manufacturing Resource
Editor (MRE). Capabilities thus captured serve two purposes. First, they
provide PCA manufacturing capability information to the Rule Execution
Facility. Second, they provide browsable electronic documentation of the
manufacturing facility's equipment and organization. Knowledge regarding
specific PCA manufacturing equipment may be captured using the MRE, making
it more widely available and ensuring that such knowledge will not be lost
due to personnel changes.
3.0 RASSP Manufacturing Interface Usage Scenarios
This Section discusses three major activities supported by the RASSP Manufacturing
Interface. These activities are described below:
3.1 Remote, Facility Specific Producibility Analysis
A PCA designer will first use the Manufacturing Interface once initial
PCA component placement has been completed. At this point, the design is
converted into a standard representation, thus making it accessible to
the core functionality of the Manufacturing Interface. The Producibility
Analyzer can then be used to analyze the PCA design with respect to specific
production capabilities. The output of this analysis will be producibility
issues. These issues may be resolved by either modifying the PCA design,
by selecting different production lines, or a combination of the two. If
the PCA design is modified during the issue resolution process, the design
may again be converted to the standard form and analyzed with the Producibility
Analyzer. This process is repeated until no issues remain or it becomes
clear that the manufacturing facility is not capable of producing the product
within an acceptable amount of time, at an acceptable cost, or with an
acceptable degree of quality.
3.2 Capturing Manufacturing Facility Knowledge
The manufacturing engineer uses the Manufacturing Interface for two distinct
purposes:
3.3 Automation Enabled by Industry Standards
Manufacturing engineers may also use the Manufacturing Interface to generate
NC programs and setup sheets for PCA assembly machines. The RASSP-MI enables
this kind of automation by providing PCA product data in the GenCAD data
format. GenCAD is used by Mitron's CIMBridge suite of manufacturing support
tools, which include NC program generators and process planning capabilities.
In addition, GenCAD forms the basis of the IPC-2510[IPC97] standard currently
in development. Once this standard has been completed, the current GenCAD
capability can be updated to comply with IPC-2510, thus increasing the
generality of the RASSP-MI's capabilities.
Next: 4 LMC Installation
Up: Appnotes Index
Previous:2 Technology Description