CONCURRENT ENGINEERING PHILOSOPHY IMPLEMENTED USING COMPUTER-OPTIMIZED DESIGN

Concurrent engineering is seen as a philosophy with the aim of simulta neously involving suppliers and customers at an early stage in the des ign process. The transfer of technology has been established as the ke y element in this process, together with the coordination of the produ ct development process. An ESPRIT (7752) project at De Montfort Univer sity has benchmarked the levels of concurrent engineering (CE) of manu facturing companies in the United Kingdom. This has shown, in general, that two fundamental methods for the implementation of CE exist, thes e being specialized multi-functional teams and multi-functional teams using computer optimization, the latter being seen as the way forward. This paper examines the use of an expert system toolkit, particularly in the design for manufacture (DFM) process. Dealing with knowledge a cquisition, the function as well as the structure of component element s is represented. The paper also describes work by De Montfort Univers ity in integrating an expert and computer aided design (CAD) system th at meets the requirements for accomplishing the concept of design for manufacture. In the future intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS) aim ed at systematizing the know-how wilt be used, which will be of partic ular value in showing how to use knowledge effectively.