Product design for manufacturing: the use of knowledge based systems in concurrent engineering

Product design for manufacturing and the use of knowledge-based systems in concurrent engineering are examined. The satisficer, a software system that comprises four expert systems, called the PDE (preliminary design evaluator), DDE (detail design evaluator), MFE (manufacturing evaluator), and ASE (assembly evaluator), is described. The concerns of preliminary design, detail design, manufacturing, and assembly are represented by means of constraints in terms of production rules in the knowledge base, and inference mechanisms in the expert system determine the constraint violations in the desired manner. The machining of mating mechanical components is used as an example to illustrate the use of knowledge-based systems and their structure