To improve competitiveness, industrial companies have to reduce cost and environmental impact while improving safety and reliability in design and manufacture of their products. Selecting the most effective design option is usually time consuming; late decisions may eventually jeopardise the balance of the whole project. Because the processes of design assessment are very complex and the data and information available at the early design stage may not be complete for decision-making in many circumstances, it may be extremely difficult to assess the design options due to the great uncertainty involved. A fuzzy reasoning approach has demonstrated its usefulness and accuracy in assessing design option under combinations of conditions where there is a lack of design date and information. This paper presents the development of a new fuzzy-based intelligent decision making support system for modelling various design variables for engineering product design at the design stage. An example is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.
">To improve competitiveness, industrial companies have to reduce cost and environmental impact while improving safety and reliability in design and manufacture of their products. Selecting the most effective design option is usually time consuming; late decisions may eventually jeopardise the balance of the whole project. Because the processes of design assessment are very complex and the data and information available at the early design stage may not be complete for decision-making in many circumstances, it may be extremely difficult to assess the design options due to the great uncertainty involved. A fuzzy reasoning approach has demonstrated its usefulness and accuracy in assessing design option under combinations of conditions where there is a lack of design date and information. This paper presents the development of a new fuzzy-based intelligent decision making support system for modelling various design variables for engineering product design at the design stage. An example is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.