System and method for manufacturing a part

A method of manufacturing a part, the method comprising:

• performing a sequence of one or more manufacturing process steps to one or more features of the part;
• generating one or more manufacturing data segments describing the sequence of the one or more manufacturing process steps;
• and
• constructing one or more feature-based manufacturing data items using
• manufacturing data having the one or more manufacturing data segments associated with reference data, the reference data indicating an order of the one or more manufacturing process steps in the sequence, and
• an associator table having one or more feature identifier of the one or more features associated to one or more sequence references,
• the constructing including associating the one or more manufacturing data segments with corresponding ones of the one or more feature identifiers based on associating the sequence data to the one or more sequence references.

A method of improving a manufacturing process, the method comprising:

• receiving tool path data including one or more tool paths corresponding to a sequence of one or more manufacturing process steps to be executed to one or more features of a part, the one or more tool paths associated to sequence data, the sequence data indicating an order of the one or more manufacturing process steps in the sequence;
• receiving tool geometry data including one or more tool geometries associated to the one or more tool paths;
• receiving feature geometry data including one or more feature geometries of the one or more feature of the part associated to one or more feature identifiers of the one or more features;
• computing one or more tool locations based on the one or more tool paths and the one or more tool geometries;
• and
• constructing an associator table including
• comparing the one or more tool locations and the one or more feature geometries to identify matches;
• and
• associating the one or more feature identifiers to the one or more sequence references based on the matches and the sequence data.