Using a Manufacturing Planner as a Designer’s tool: Identifying Cost-Critical Areas of Designs

This work focuses on the integration of an automated manufacturing planner in a product design environment. One problem faced by product designers is the fact that it is often difficult to quickly obtain accurate manufacturability evaluations early in the design process. By integrating a design environment with a manufacturing planner, manufacturing evaluations can be rapidly supplied to the designer enabling him or her to make better informed design decisions. Difficulties encountered in accomplishing this integration include getting information from the design environment to the automated planner, and returning manufacturing evaluations from the planner back to the designer in a form that makes sense to the designer. The former is being accomplished in an on-going project. The latter is the subject of this work. t