A group technology knowledge-based system for a rapid response manufacturing environment

Abstract

The emergence of global markets for engineered products, and the resulting increase in competition in markets traditionally dominated by US manufacturers, has led to calls for increased productivity. Attention is particularly focused on understanding engineering design and developing new methodologies to increase the efficiency of the design process. One such method is concurrent engineering (CE). CE has focused on developing the tools and techniques for designing products. However, design in many industries is evolutionary, consisting primarily of incremental changes to existing products. This is known as the variant design engineering approach. Although concurrent engineering is concerned with integrating people with traditional engineering skills, the variant design engineering approach is concerned with empowering people with new skills by giving direct access to complete knowledge about design and manufacture of parts, with the philosophy that ‘the knowledge is not generated at design time, but is retrieved from an engineering database which completely documents existing designs’.