Special issue on integrated and hybrid intelligent systems in product design and development

摘要

With ever increasing complexity of products and customer demands, companies are adopting new strategies to meet the changing technological requirements, shorter product life cycles, and globalization of manufacturing operations. Product design and development are getting more sophisticated procedures/processes involved and require designers and engineers possessing different expertise, knowledge and experience to work together. To address these challenges, techniques based on artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being used to improve effectiveness and efficiency in the product design and development life cycle. Intelligent systems can be beneficially applied to many aspects of design and also design-related tasks, for example, identifying customer demands and requirements, design and planning, production, delivery, marketing and customer services, etc. Individual intelligent paradigms (such as fuzzy logic, neural network, genetic algorithm, case-based reasoning, and especially expert systems) have been applied to specific stages of the design process (especially expert systems). However, increasingly, hybrid solutions, that integrate multiple individual intelligent techniques, are required to solve complex design problems. The integrated and hybrid intelligent environment can provide various information and knowledge for supporting rapid and intelligent decision-making throughout the entire design and development process.