Internet based computer aided engineering in agile plastic mould design and development

Abstract

In response to the unprecedented business pressure and unparalleled economic challenges of today's business marketplace, a manufacturing company has to react according to the customer needs and take a change-driven, concurrent-engineering approach to shorten its product development cycle whilst at the same time needs to satisfy customers' demands for high quality, innovative product and customization that often require made-to-order manufacturing. The content of the project research covers the exploration of the appropriate computer aided technologies and corresponding computer design tools as well as the design philosophies that necessary to support the establishment of an agile plastic mould design and development (APMD2) system. The design of the APMD2 system model was based on the fulfilment of four characteristics that include: (i) Fully CAE driven collaborative design intelligence; (ii) Open, extensible and web-centric architecture / environment for the integration of multi-engineering computer aided design tools; (iii) Customer satisfaction requirement (CSR) response driven design; and (iv) Knowledge capturing and reuse. The project execution had also been divided into four individual phases that include: (i) Conformation of the strategic plastic mould design and development improvement areas and state-of-the-art knowledge accumulation; (ii) Establishment of the agile plastic mould design and development system model and the required architecture; (iii) Development of the critical agile design system modules; and (iv) Verification of the APMD2 prototyping system and system performance evaluation. The APMD2 system is a generic integration product design and development system for plastic mould manufacturing industry. The APMD2 system offers more functions than standard computer aided design (CAD) systems by providing not only normal computer aided engineering (CAE) functions but also agility. Through the system's intelligent geometry creation capability and ability to handle a design change across multi-design system architectures, the response to a design change requisition - agility can be substantially improved. Furthermore, knowledge gained could be captured and stored to increase system intelligence. The APMD2 system consists eight strategic core modules, namely (i) Injection Part Cost Estimation Module; (ii) Product Information Visualization and Sharing Module; (iii) Mould Geometry Creation Module; (iv) CAE for Product and Mould Design Module; (v) Process Parameters Optimization Module; (vi) Plastic Moulding Defects Diagnostic Module; (vii) Legacy Mould Testing Data Transfer Module; and (viii) Extended Product Design Information Module. In order to facilitate the ease of access and offer the optimum flexibility for further system enhancement and development, a web centric three-tier modular architecture has been employed for system development. As a consequence, all the modules can be replaced, removed and added on whenever necessary. Traditionally, manufacturers always make use several stand alone design systems to handle their entirely product design and development activities. Therefore, none of them can take the advantage of enterprise-wide design associativity as associativity does not exist within a single-system architecture. Lack of associativity in between isolated systems has obstructed design information integration and thus reduces the speed of response. Through the use of the APMD2 system, a fully associative plastic mould design and development process can be conducted across multi-platform design system can be achieved. Thus, the time saving from both mould debug and modification process can be improved significantly.