Patent ID: 8095229

Claim:
A computer implemented method for defining a manufacturing process, the computer implemented method comprising: in a processor: given a manufactured product formed of one or more parts, for each user interaction, describing a work to be done in response to a user graphically interacting with a three-dimensional representation of the one or more parts; providing the user with feedback of the describing in the form of a graphical representation of the work to be done, the manufacturing process being defined by the graphical representation of the work to be done; wherein the describing includes: given a first manufacturing process that describes a first unit of work to be done on a first set of work inputs that includes a first part, second part, and third part of the manufactured product; in response to the user moving the three-dimensional representations of the first part and the second part from a graphical representation of the first unit of work to be done; decomposing the first manufacturing process into a second manufacturing process that describes a second unit of work to be done on a second set of work inputs that includes the first part and the second part, the three-dimensional representations of which the user moved; and updating the first manufacturing process to describe the first unit of work to be done on the first set of work inputs that includes a work output of the second manufacturing process and the third part.