An approach to concurrent engineering

This paper presents a new approach to concurrent engineering, focusing on simultaneous product design and process planning. The key elements in this approach are (a) a framework for structuring manufacturing information and maximizing the information-carrying capacity of the design models, (b) a procedure for intelligently mapping form features on to pertinent manufacturing considerations and (c) a procedure for utilizing the available manufacturing information about components already machined within the given manufacturing environment. The proposed approach provides a natural way for conveying manufacturing information to the designer. Its distinguishing feature is the application of a wide range of artificial intelligence techniques for knowledge acquisition and deductive reasoning.