Design Evaluation and Partner Selection Approach Consider an agile manufacturing firm that forms partnerships with other manufacturers as necessary to produce mechanical or electromechanical products quickly in response to market opportunities. The firm and its partners share data electronically about product designs and manufacturing capabilities and have established policies for forming virtual enterprises. In this environment the firm decides to design and manufacture a new product. From the product requirements, the designer synthesizes a new design and seeks feedback on the cost, quality, and lead time necessary to manufacture this design in a virtual enterprise composed of the firm and its partners.
Figure provides an overview of the system's functionality.
Using the CAD system, the designer first stores the design under consideration in an integrated product model that defines the complete geometry and topology of the product shape, the manufacturing features of the product, and the electrical components and attributes of the product. Both methods require more abstract product information than that in the STEP-based product model. The designer uses the additional data in the OOGT information of the similar products to calculate more accurate similarity measures and to sort the list of similar products. If no adequate information is obtained from the variant design evaluation, the designer performs high-level process planning in two steps. These process plans specify the sequence of manufacturing operations, the candidate partners who could perform these operations, and the design attributes to be realized at each operation.