A framework supporting concurrent 'Product Family and Manufacturing System' synthesis decision making

This paper presents a framework for providing both product family design and factory planning stakeholders with proactive and content aware support during conceptual synthesis decision making. The framework aims to support the relevant stakeholders primarily by providing awareness of decision consequence on both manufacturing systems and product life cycle stages. Knowledge based support is also provided in the form of guidance on avoiding unintentional decision consequences and manufacturing resource usage. This framework is used as the basis for the development of an intelligent computer based tool that supports concurrent manufacturing system and product family design.