Fuzzy Logic Applications in Flanges Manufacturing

Abstract

The industrial engineering experts consider the product early design stage as one of the most important stage of the design process, because it influences all stages of the product life cycle. One of the capital questions for manufacturing or design engineering people is how simple or elaborated work piece to use for a given part, in a specific set of production conditions. The optimization problem consists of the choosing of the right work piece for the current production conditions. In many cases this problem is solved empirically, based on the experience of the manufacturer. This approach leads to results that are situated more or less close to the optimum for the technical and economical point of view. Fuzzy logic is a method that is used in system control and analysis design, because it shortens the time for engineering development and sometimes, in the case of highly complex systems, is the only way to solve the problem. For the parts manufacturing, the main idea of the algorithm is to formalize the knowledge regarding production volume, geometry, loading conditions and other factors, using fuzzy sets and then to take the work piece choosing decision through the inference rules that are specified to fuzzy logic methodology. The described fuzzy logic algorithm allows a rapid, argued choosing of the work piece type in the production. The paper describes the method implementation for the manufacturing of flanges, including the description of the software results.