Intelligent Analysis of Utilization of Special Purpose Machines for Drilling Operations

Drilling and drilling-related operations constitute more than 60% of all machining processes in manufacturing industries. Consequently, it is important to know how to perform these operations properly. With availability of many machining processes capable of performing drilling operations sometimes it is difficult to decide which process would result in a higher profit or a lower unit cost for a given task. Due to increasing global competition, manufacturing industries are now more concerned with their productivity and are more sensitive than ever to their investments with respect to flexibility and efficiency of production equipment (Boothroyd and Knight, 2005, Wecka and Staimer, 2002). Researchers (Ko et al., 2005) believe that increasing the quality of production and reducing cost and time of production are very important factors in achieving higher productivity. Achieving this goal requires reconsidering current production methods that could lead to introduction of new production techniques and more advanced technologies.