| For a sheet metal stamping company, its ability to leverage the experiences and lessons learned from past jobs can be a source of significant competitive advantage. By being able to efficiently store and retrieve part design and manufacturing knowledge, the company can improve its decision-making in all stages (including design development, cost estimation and price quotations, process planning, gaging and inspection) of a stamping's production life cycle based on its experience with similar parts that it has produced in the past. This research is motivated by the challenge of how the historical design and manufacturing information can be captured and transformed into formats in which knowledge can be effectively represented, efficiently indexed, easily searched, quickly extracted and successfully utilized to enable similarity-based decision-making. This research develops a new approach to design representation and retrieval that will enable the sheet metal stamping industry to effectively preserve and reuse knowledge from past experiences.; We develop a semantic-based design representation and retrieval methodology using eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The Sheet Metal Stamping Markup Language (SMSML) proposed in this research provides an efficient method for describing and searching designs based on geometric and non-geometric information. Based on the SMSML, we design and implement a prototype of information management system called Design Representation and Retrieval System (DRRS) for sheet metal stampings. This prototype can be used for storage and retrieval of manufacturing information (such as die information, tooling, manufacturing process information, as well as lessons learned) relating to sheet metal stampings.; This research creates a new paradigm for how design and manufacturing knowledge can be represented, stored and used for effective decision-making in sheet metal stamping companies. Although this research focused on the sheet metal industry, the concept of part representation using industry specific markup languages is applicable to other industries as well. |
