Computer-aided design for manufacturing process selection

This paper describes an expert system that helps designers select a manufacturing process in the early stage of product design. First, the paper focuses on net-shape manufacturing processes and identifies the major factors that affect the selection of an appropriate process. Examples of these factors include shape, production volume, and material. A versatile methodology should consider all the factors simultaneously in assessing the suitability of the candidate processes. The proposed system uses the concept of design compatibility analysis to represent the suitability of candidate processes with respect to the given product specifications. The system uses this knowledge to eliminate incompatible candidates and rank the compatible set of processes. A prototype system called DFPS uses HyperCard and Prolog to implement the proposed methodology. DFPS also contains information related to each process.