Towards a Knowledge-Based Design Methodology for Managing the Complexity in the Integrated Product and Process Development of Electric Motors

Due to the increasing areas of application, the development and production of electric motors has become one of the most relevant topics in engineering research. In order to benefit from the growing market demand, companies pursue the adaption of new procedures for enabling an efficient development and manufacturing of electric motors. However, the numerous product variations, process chain alternatives, tolerance-related interdependencies between product properties and manufacturing technologies as well as the inclusion of various engineering disciplines constitute severe difficulties. To overcome these problems, concepts to support the interdisciplinary collaboration and to enable the automatic provision and processing of solution knowledge have to be elaborated. Thus, this paper presents an approach for a knowledge-based integrated product and process development of electric motors which supports the determination of the optimal product configuration in accordance with the required manufacturing processes. To assist the individual user roles in their decision making and to anticipate information asymmetries, a so-called knowledge-based system is involved which consolidates existing product and process knowledge.