Development of a Knowledge-Based Process Planning System for an Auto Panel

Challenges and pressures from the growing globalisation of markets have made automotive enterprises shorten the product development cycle time and reduce costs through the increasing use of mathematics-based tools and processes. In order to bridge the gap between experience-based design and science-based engineering, this paper establishes a knowledge-based process planning system to fully support auto panel die development and design automation. The framework of this novel system is proposed, and key issues, such as knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and knowledge-based design are described in detail. The function model of the system is proposed to illustrate the architecture and functionality of the system. The system provides users with just-in-time access to the appropriate knowledge and information to reduce the search burden. A practical example is used to show the great advantage of the knowledge-based process planning system.