INTEGRATED DESIGN ENVIRONMENT FOR EXTENDED MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES

The paper reports on a new theoretical platform and pilot environment for rapid distributed product design in extended enterprises using collaborative, autonomous design and manufacturing agents. The approach is based on exchange of requests and information between design and manufacturing evaluation agents. The decision making on design manufacturability is based on using multilevel resource models to describe the exclusive and shared capability boundaries between different manufacturing resources. The reported research aims to provide the designers with a rapid manufacturing feasibility assessment tool to be used at different design and planning stages in extended manufacturing enterprises.