Discovering Methodologies for Integrated Product Design

Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing Research Planning Workshop, 1998

Volume

Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing Research Planning Workshop, 1998

Contents

The current methodologies for multi-disciplinary product design are based on compromising between different disciplines rather than integrating them. These methodologies do not use a systematic and holistic approach to the problem of multi-disciplinary design and thus are piecemeal rather than comprehensive. This paper presents a new approach to producing design methodologies for integration of the different disciplines in the design process. A multi-agent system has been developed that designs a 2-DOF robot arm by incorporating five proposed strategies for integration between disciplines. Design methodologies are extracted by tracking the system and generalizing the traces that are produced. The results show that the trace of the system provides invaluable information on how to improve the design process.