Sheet metal bending is a metal forming process, in which flat sheets are bent along straight bend lines in
a specific bending sequence to form three-dimensional parts. A large number of tools with different
characteristics can be used in this process. The task to choose the right tooling for a requested sheet metal
part is however one of the bottle necks in process planning. An inefficient tool selection may result in
failure of finding a feasible bending sequence. In previous work, methodologies for tool selection and
optimization have been proposed. The presented paper describes a framework to implement these
methodologies into a system that allows automatic tool selection in consistent consideration of bend
sequencing. As a result, automated and optimized tool selection for sheet metal bending is achieved, as
illustrated by performance test results for a robust software implementation4.