Patent ID: 7551975

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating electronic data for use in planning the execution of a manufacturing process, the method comprising: receiving user-defined groupings for multiple execution-level manufacturing operations that are defined in a manufacturing process execution-level electronic data model and that define a process flow to produce a product; determining, for each of the defined groupings, whether the defined grouping includes multiple occurrences of a process step definition that has multiple different defined alternative steps, and if so, revising the process flow by changing the defined groupings so that each defined grouping of the defined groupings has no more than a single occurrence of a process step definition that has multiple different defined alternative steps; generating and storing in memory the electronic data for use in planning execution of the manufacturing process using the changed defined groupings for the multiple execution-level manufacturing operations; and using the generated electronic data stored in memory in time duration calculations for the planning of the manufacturing process.