... and structural vibration of the machine tool and wear, failure, and thermaldeformations of the tool (Rangwala and Dornfeld, 1990; Li and Elbestawi, 1996).Currently, commercially available controllers ... sequence of operations and processplanning, control of the machines and monitoring of the processes (on/off line), automation,networking and communication systems, and quality control of the production ... major epochs: (1) precomputer numerical control, (2) computernumerical control (CNC), and (3) knowledge epochs (Mehrabi and Ulsoy, 1997; Mehrabi, Ulsoy, and Koren, 1998). In the pre-CNC epochs...