A decision-making framework model for design and manufacturing of mechanical transmission system development

Knowledge-based systems are proving to be a powerful tool with great potential for developing intelligent design support environments to improve quality of products and reduce product development costs by eliminating or minimizing many of the trial-and-error iterations involved in product development. This article describes an approach towards the development of intelligent design support environments for mechanical transmission systems, along with implementation details of a distributed knowledge-based gearing design and manufacturing system that is deployed over the Internet. The system embodies the various tasks of the design process, with modules that address: performance evaluation, process optimization, manufacturability analysis, and provides reasoning and decision-making capabilities for reducing the time between gear tooth creation, detailed design and final production. This methodology is highly desirable in that it is able to simulate real working conditions, evaluate and optimize the design effectively, prevent designers from time-consuming iterations and reduce long and expensive test phases.