From fuzzy input requirements to crisp design

Design is a highly knowledge-intensive and ill-structured problem. Most of the practical problems we face in a design are either too complex or too ill-defined to analyse with conventional approaches. By defining functional requirements as a fuzzy set, one can perform inexact reasoning during the conceptual or creative phase of the design process. In this paper the feasibility of utilising fuzzy associative memory (FAM) in design automation is examined. The FAM paradigm exploits the relationships between functional requirements and physical structures in order to map fuzzy functional requirements to a crisp design.