Morteza Sadegh Amalnik - Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Tabriz

Concurrent engineering is a systematic approach to the integrated concurrent design of product and their related processes. This approach considers all elements of the product life cycle from conceptual stages to the final stages of product development including quality, cost, manufacturability, schedule and user requirements. It is an organizational strategy which creates an environment that people who design or manufacture products work to gather under the same goals and the same sense of values to tackle the same problems from the early stages of product development to the final stage of product development. The goals are reduction of product development time, cost and shorter time to market. This paper addresses the concept and development of a knowledge-based-system (KBS) in computer based concurrent engineering environment for hard and brittle material, such as glass, quartz, diamond, carbides, semi conducting materials, ceramic and graphite etc. which can be machined with ultrasonic. An advisory system in computer integrated manufacturing and concurrent engineering environment for Ultrasonic machining (USM) based on object oriented technique is developed. The system links with A feature based CAD system in order to extract design. The knowledge base is linked with databases. The machining cycle time, cost, penetration rate, efficiency and effectiveness, of each selected design feature are estimated. The system provides useful information such as machining cycle time and cost, penetration rate, efficiency and effectiveness of machining of the selected design feature for product designers at the conceptual stages of design process and also advises manufacturing engineers to select optimum machining parameters.