Micro-products are small components already integrated in mass-market products in various fields. Micro-products show specificities compared to macro-products and their design process differs. Currently they are designed in a R&D framework, which implies much “build and test” iteration in order to optimize product design or production. As there is no stable knowledge corpus in micro manufacturing world, discussion with specialist is currently the only solution when designing and manufacturing the micro-component. In this paper a conceptual model of micro-process planning is proposed considering the specificities of the micro-world. The data and knowledge is presented in a uniform database. Further on, qualitative and quantitative properties and criteria for process planning are presented. Manufacturing of the micro-component is often realized through a process chain which is defined by a micro-technology expert who is familiar with all the data, knowledge, qualitative and quantitative properties and criteria of the micro-process candidates for the process chain. In the paper, a time efficient and cost effective process chain is analyzed in order to fill the required data in the process planning system. Process chain applied consists of Water Jet (WJ) technology to produce the electrode for Die-Sinking Electrical Discharge Micro Machining (EDMM). EDMM is further used as the next process in the process chain to produce the tool for replication processes. Based on the characterization of micro-features realized, the presented process chain cannot compete in the accuracy with the state of the art micro-machining processes and is limited to feature dimensions above 100 μm.
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