Generating data used in planning the execution of a manufacturing process
includes consistency checks that are performed on proposed groupings of
manufacturing operations to make sure that the groupings are defined in a
way that enables the information to be aggregated for use in planning. To
do this, defined groupings are received for multiple execution-level
manufacturing operations that are defined in a manufacturing process
execution-level electronic data model and that define a process flow to
produce a product. In one aspect, for each of the defined groupings, it
is determined whether the defined grouping includes multiple occurrences
of a process step definition that has multiple different defined
alternative steps, and if so, the defined groupings are changed so that
each defined grouping of the defined groupings has no more than a single
occurrence of a process step definition that has multiple different
defined alternative steps.