An Approach to Designing Distributed Knowledge-based Software Platform for Injection Mould Industry

Nowadays, the globalization of the manufacturing enterprises requires collaboration across frontiers. In order to attain effective collaboration, the information about the product life cycle must be captured and administrated in a way that supports the decision taken during the product development. In this context, the manufacturing process information needs to be shared between manufacturers. The moulding process is quite complex involving many variable process parameters like pressure, temperature and time settings. These process parameters have to be optimally set in order to improve part quality and maximize the production capacity of the injection moulding machine. In this paper we propose an approach to designing distributed knowledge-based software platform for injection mould industry. The user requirements to the software tools and the key features of our design are defined. The basic principles and the architecture of the software platform and decision support tools are considered. Key-Words: Distributed systems; Service-oriented architecture; Rule-based knowledge representation; Rule engine tools; User requirements analysis; Injection moulding.