A computer-based intelligent system for Design for Assembly

A computer-based intelligent system for Design for Assembly (DFA) within a concurrent engineering environment is presented in this article. The main objective of the current research work is to develop an expert system that supports new techniques for design for assembly and to give users the possibility to assess and reduce the total production cost at an early stage during the design process. The system enables designers to minimise the number of components of a product and select the most economic assembly technique for that specific product.