Rapid Data and Decision Support Tool for Mould Testing

摘要

The mould testing process stage is often the most hectic in any plastic injection mould industries. The main reasons for it are that there are much data to manage and that much decision has to be made dynamically during the mould testing process. Traditionally and even up till now, mould making industries rely on a lot of very experienced mould testing personnel or field experts to identify the problems and to suggest recommendations during the mould testing process. However, in a fast paced manufacturing environment, most of the mould projects are now re-distributed into smaller units and the processes are carried out in other countries that bear lower manufacturing cost. On the other hand, to manage the numerous data that are constantly input during the mould testing process is a demanding task because it takes a long time to manage. However, these problems of increased expenses, insufficient field experts, tedious and slow data organization could be overcome through the use of a rapid knowledge-based decision support and data management system, specially customized for mould making industries. A case study would be presented to demonstrate the application of this support tool to ease the decision making and troubleshooting of the mould testing process for a plastic component.