3. Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP)3.1. Evolution of CAPPComputer aided process planning (CAPP)’s inception dates backto the mid 1970s. Though the notion of using computers to aidprocess planning was introduced by Niebel [18] in 1965, one of themajor pioneers of CAPP was Wysk [19] who in his PhD thesis of1977 outlined an automated process planning and selectionprogram: APPAS. These sparked a plethora of CAPP research andsystems with numerous CAPP developments in the 1970s and1980s which are reported by Weill et al. [20] and Alting and Zhang[21] in their early reviews. The computer integrated manufacturing systems push ofthe 1990s saw commercial CAPP systems beingintegrated within CAD/CAM and tooling systems [22] for microprocess (machine level) planning together with macro processplanning linking process planning and production planning andcontrol [23]. In parallel with these commercial system developments, the academic community has been exploring ArtificialIntelligent and Knowledge Based techniques [24] combined withCAPP research in design and manufacturing features [25]. One ofthe final CAPP surveys by Marri et al. [26] illustrates the significantreduction in systems since the 1980s. Today there is an emergingneed to integrate process planning and other factory softwaresystems to enable realtime planning and decision making based onthe current and predicted status of the factory shopfloor.3.2. Energy conscious and energy efficient CAPPOne of the first papers to recognise the need to measure energyusage and the need for consider energy planning in the machiningprocess dates back to 1979 [27]. From this initial investigation itwas not until 1995 when Sheng et al. [6] outlined theirenvironmentally conscious multi-objective approach to processplanning. In this approach they identify a feed forward modelwhich takes into account environmental factors such as processenergy, process time, fluid coated on chips, evaporated fluid, toolscrap fluid mist, chip volumes and tool particles. This informationis fed into an environmental impact model where a score for eachmachining operation is generated and fed into a process planningmodule with process energy used and process time and surfacequality requirements to generate machining process parameters.The model underpinning the approach is detailed by Munoz andSheng [28] and extended based on feature based case studycomponents in 1999, exploring environmental planning at themicro (i.e. cutting tool parameters) [29] and macro planning (i.e.setup and feature sequencing) [30] levels.The work of Dahmus and Gutowski [8] reported in 2000, alsohas a major influence on process planning where they present asystem-level environmental analysis of machining. This workdescribes an analysis together with a breakdown of energy usagefor different machine tool types from manual machines to modernmachining centres. The latest work on CAPP relates to systems tosupport Green manufacturing with a CAPP system that takes intoaccount optimisation of energy consumption as part of theplanning process [31].In 2009 research reported by Jin et al. [32] provides a multiobjective optimisation model for environmentally conscious CAPP.This paper outlines a mathematical model that takes into accountmaterials, environmental data and environmental impact of thematerials based on existing commercial database tools namelyECO-SCAN, IDEMAT to compute an environmental score for eachtooling operation. This approach combined with the approach byXu and Li [33] provides a basis for possible new goal orientedmulti-parameter approach to represent a process parameterselection at multi-levels incorporating both micro and macrodecision levels and process knowledge with mathematical logic.