The objective of this research is to lay the groundwork for establishment of data and knowledge bases and tools to support strategic product design. Strategic product design seeks to combine functional and manufacturing design of a product, including life- cycle issues. The research will provide a needed scientific basis for the growing move toward concurrent engineering which is presently carried out by dedicated teams of experts with few or no computer tools to aid them. Prior work has pointed to three areas where results are needed and the means to achieve them are available: generation and evaluation of alternate assembly sequences, combination of the above with economic analysis and synthesis tools for designing assembly systems, design of test and quality control strategies, and equipment selection and task assignment. This research is based on the results of NSF Grant DMC- 8417949 entitled Computer-Aided Design of Flexible Assembly Systems.
