Abstract: An improved bat algorithm is employed to optimize the process planning for the
complicated part to improve the efficiency and quality in process planning. A feasible bat encoding
and decoding strategy is designed based on traditional process route representation method from the
features to processes. The mapping matrix of process route and bat positions in the search space is
constructed, and an initialized approach of bat population is designed. A modification for the local
search of bat algorithms (BA) is executed to explore the search space. And displacement and mutation
operation for local optimal solution are executed to diverse the population. Simulation experiments
verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithm for process planning.

Key words: process planning, bat algorithm, operation constraints, local search