Modular Product Design Using Cyberinfrastructure for Global Manufacturing

Abstract

Modularization of parts—a fairly recent trend in product development—allows part definitions to be kept in a machine-readable form, making it possible to define a part based on its input interfaces, output interfaces, behaviors, and geometric information. The machine-readable representation of parts enables manufacturing companies to more efficiently identify parts suppliers in global and virtual environments. Such representation also helps automate modular product design during detailed parametric design phases. Our research showed that modular product design can be formulated as an artificial intelligence (AI) Planning problem, and we propose a cyberinfrastructure-based framework to support automation. We demonstrate the proposed framework’s implication on global manufacturing using part specification information for personal computers as an example.