Patent Document ID: 20110130855
Application ID: 12893247
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for determining an optimum manufacturing process routing, the method comprising: electronically constructing a plurality of manufacturing process routings for a component to be manufactured, the electronically constructing for each manufacturing process routing of the plurality of manufacturing process routings comprising defining a recursive process routing tree for each manufacturing process routing, the recursive process routing tree comprising a plurality of nodes, each node of the plurality of nodes corresponding to a manufacturing process and comprising a branch node when the manufacturing process for a given node may be decomposed into a plurality of sub-processes for the given node, the electronically constructing being performed using at least one computer processor programmed to so electronically construct the plurality of manufacturing process routings; and electronically determining an optimum process routing of the plurality of manufacturing process routings by evaluating each recursive process routing tree for the plurality of manufacturing process routings with reference to an electronic process routing variable to be optimized and determining the optimum process routing that minimizes the electronic process routing variable to be optimized, the electronically determining being performed using the at least one computer processor, the at least one computer processor being further programmed to so electronically determine the optimum process routing.