Automating Redesign of Sheet-Metal Parts in Automotive Industry Using KBE and CBR

Abstract

Automating redesign is an approach for engineering designers to prevent design related manufacturability problems in early product development and thus reduce costly design iterations. A vast amount of work exists, with most research findings seemingly staying within the research community rather than finding its way into use in industrial settings where research issues have often evolved from the concerned applied research. The aim of this paper is to present an approach with industrial implementation potential regarding automating redesign of sheet-metal components in early product development to avoid manufacturing problems due to design flaws and non-optimal designs. Geometry, generated by a knowledge-based engineering (KBE) system, gives input to the case-based reasoning (CBR) governed manufacturing planning. If geometry is found non-manufacturable or enhancement of already manufacturable geometry is possible, the CBR system will suggest redesign actions to resolve the problem. CBR extends the capabilities of the rule-based KBE-system by enabling plan-based evaluation. The approach has the potential for industrial implementation, since KBE is often closely coupled to an industrial CAD-system, hence enabling technology is at the industry. Also, combining KBE and CBR reduces the coding effort compared to coding the whole design support with CBR, as feature recognition is simplified by means of KBE. A case study of development of sheet-metal manufactured parts at a Swedish automotive industry partner presents the method in use. As it is shown that redesign can be automated for sheet-metal parts there is a potential for reducing costly design and manufacturing iterations.

Constraint-handling techniques for generative product design systems in the mass customization context

“…Agarwal and colleagues (Agarwal & Cagan, 1998; Agarwal et al, 1999) have associated the shape grammar technique with parametric cost and applied it to the design of coffee makers (see Cagan, 2001, for a review on the use of shape grammars in engineering design). Numerous efforts have also been made to take into account the engineering and production constraints early in the development process, using knowledge-based engineering systems (see El-Sayed & Chassapis, 2005; Sandberg & Larsson, 2006; Lin et al, 2009; Johansson, 2011) or a combination of knowledge-based engineering and optimization systems, as in Petersson et al (2012), where the lightweight gripper constraint satisfaction and optimization system is based on the weighted sum technique. These works, even if they present interesting design systems, are not primarily concerned with diversity and choice.…”

Platform-based product development in the process industry: a systematic literature review

“…Besides product and production platforms, Dadfar et al (2013) present a definition for technology platforms, which takes an integrated perspective of 'capabilities, physical aspects and know-how' as enablers of delivering product variety. Finally, both explicit (Lager 2017) and implicit (Sandberg and Larsson 2006;Karayel and Ozkan 2006;Xie et al 2001) descriptions of knowledge platforms were identified, all to support new product development process by reusing design knowledge. In summary, regardless of the type of platform or the origin of the definition, platforms are considered as means of facilitating high product variety for manufacturers in the process industry.…”

“…Integration of organisational functions has been addressed by multiple authors. Most of the papers identified in this cluster are related to sheet metal processing(Sandberg and Larsson 2006;Karayel and Ozkan 2006;Xie et al 2001;Chin and Tang 2002), and seek to decrease product development time by better integrating knowledge of product engineers and manufacturing engineers.…”

“…• Modular system allows tailoring to specific product groups. Sandberg and Larsson (2006) System for automated redesign of sheet metal parts.…”

Cost estimation of automotive sheet metal components using knowledge-based engineering and case-based reasoning

“…Similar plans are retrieved using nearest neighbour search. Sandberg and Larsson [21] use KBE and CBR in an iterative process for automated design of sheet-metal parts. Both techniques are applied for part design, evaluation and optimization.…”