Co-evolution model for prediction and synthesis of new products and manufacturing systems
- Vol.134(5), May
- New York ASME 2012
- 1-12p.
A model for predicting the future codevelopment of new products and manufacturing systems is presented. The model incorporates a set of manufacturing co-evolution hypotheses that promote association between manufacturing systems and product variants throughout their shared evolution courses based on a biological analogy. It shows the impact of the different co-evolution states particularly the imperfect co-evolution, which can be remedied by predicting new systems and products. A novel mathematical technique for co-evolution knowledge synthesis is used to analyze the relationships between manufacturing capabilities and product features and discover the human synthesis knowledge implicit in their codevelopment. A set of rules and linear system of equations is formulated to discover such knowledge. The co-evolution model is mathematically established using Cladistics and trees reconciliation techniques that are used extensively in Biology.