Integration of product design and manufacturing with the use of artificial intelligent methods

Product and process design is time- and cost consuming [15]. To reduce the cost of product development, it is necessary to integrate product and process design. The proposed product planning approach integrates activities involved in product design and manufacturing process. The aim of this paper is to develop a method of knowledge integration about customer needs, product and process characteristics. The range of analyses is limited to mechanical product type manufacturing for institutional customers. Customer needs are focused on functional characteristics of the product and the trade characteristics include product price, timing and warranty. Integration of functional requirements, product and process characteristics is needed to select the best product from a catalogue and adapt it to particular customer needs. From the given set of products, where a product is described by a set of attributes, the subset is chosen which roughly satisfies customer needs. Basing on artificial intelligent (AI) methods, data related to redesign and production processes is estimated.