Simplification System for Concurrent Engineering Environment

Product design is the most important stage in the course of product development. All the important decision-making regarding manufacturing and assembly is made during this period. Concurrent Engineering (CE) has been proposed to facilitate the whole development processes by using multi-disciplinary team-work. Under the concept of CE there is a need to provide the designers an expert system to investigate their design in the early stage of design. In this paper the construction of a product design simplification system has been explored and a prototype system has been developed. The system can be used to evaluate product design on the basis of Design for Assembly (DFA) principles. Design simplification can be accomplished by three approaches. The first uses the three criteria of Boothroyd and Dewhurst's Methodology1, the second examines the functional implication of parts and the third considers if a part is secured after assembly. The system will give the designer advice according to the evaluation results. All the rules in the rule-base are derived from the expertise in DFA field. On the basis of the implementation of this prototype system further research directions are also suggested