An Expert System for Non-traditional Machining Process Selection

A rapid increase in the use of harder and difficult-to-machine metals and alloys has led to the development of nontraditional machining (NTM) processes. In NTM processes, material removal takes place employing mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical energy or combinations of these energies, without the use of a sharp cutting tool. These advanced machining processes are used to generate intricate and accurate shapes in materials, like titanium, fiberreinforced composites, ceramics, refractories and other difficult-to-machine alloys having higher strength, hardness, toughness and other diverse material properties. As various NTM processes with different capabilities and specifications are available today for a wide range of applications, there is a need for selecting a suitable NTM process for a particular application for effective utilization of its machining capabilities. The past researches reported on the selection of NTM processes using expert systems, mathematical approaches and multi-criteria decision-making models. Most of those methods do not provide due importance on the customers’ requirements. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-focused decision-making tool to integrate needs of the customers with process capabilities. In this paper, a QFD-based expert system in Visual BASIC 6.0 is developed to consider customers’ requirements in NTM process selection decision. Two illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate the applicability of the developed expert system for NTM process selection.