AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-BASED CONSTRAINT NETWORK SYSTEM FOR CONCURRENT ENGINEERING

This paper presents a new approach to concurrent engineering, namely the use of artificial intelligence constraint networks to advise the designer on improvements that can be made to the design from the perspective of the product's life-cycle. The difficulties associated with performing concurrent engineering are reviewed, and the various approaches to concurrent engineering are discussed. The requirements for a system to support concurrent engineering are indicated. An overview of constraint networks is given and this leads into a description of SPARK, an artificial intelligence constraint network systems for concurrent engineering. The operation of SPARK is illustrated by considering an example application of printed wiring board manufacture. The advantages of SPARK include being flexible enough to allow the designer to approach a problem from a variety of viewpoints, allowing the designer to design despite having incomplete information, and being able to handle the wide variety of life-cycle information requirements.