An intelligent knowledge-based system for cost estimating in the make-to-order environment

Many small- and medium-sized companies making goods to customer order have problems in estimating their manufacturing costs. These problems increase as the product becomes increasingly customised, and cannot be built from a range of standard products and sub-assemblies. A cost-estimating system is described which develops a feature-based description of the product and a description of likely problems with communicating and interpreting order-related information. These descriptions are used by the system to match the enquiry to similar orders that the company has completed in the past. It is intended that the system provides more accurate cost estimates in a much shorter time than conventional approaches.