Process planning and production scheduling are the two most important
functions of a manufacturing system. These functions strongly influence the
profitability of manufacturing a product, the optimum utilization of resources,
the delivery time of products, and many more factors. Conventionally, the
process planning and scheduling activities are performed in a sequential
manner, i.e., the process planning is done before scheduling. This approach
involves many drawbacks such as unrealistic process plans without considering the shop floor status, fixed process plans without considering the
alternative resources, invalid or suboptimal process plans and schedule due
to delay in execution, optimized process plans and schedule with a single
objective, etc. Thus, these problems can only be solved by the integration of
both functions. The integration of process planning and scheduling (IPPS)
can enhance the use of manufacturing flexibility in practice, it can improve
the level of resource utilization and ultimately it can increase the overall
profits from manufacturing. Consequently, this subject has been studied by
several researchers over the last three to four decades in order to achieve the
ultimate IPPS. This book is an attempt to summarize the approaches and
algorithms applied for IPPS by different researchers across the world. It is
worth mentioning that this is the only book which contains dedicated chapters on the introduction and fundamental approaches for IPPS, as well as a
brief review on IPPS-tested problems. This book comprises many chapters
authored by renowned researchers in IPPS research. Moreover, this book
also discusses the role of IPPS in Industry 4.0 paradigm and energy-aware
modelling for multi-objective IPPS.