Quality Function Deployment-based Expert System for Materials Selection

An appropriate material for a particular product determines the range of function, durability, cost, user’s feedback and experience about the product. Failure arising from improper material selection may often lead to loss of both revenue and reputation of the concerned manufacturing organization. Hence, selection of a proper material for a product is very important from engineering design perspective. In the field of manufacturing engineering, selection of material is a tedious task because there are numerous factors to be carefully evaluated before making the final decision. The main requirements may be different for varying applications, but depending on the working environment, several other interrelated factors may also need to be considered, thus making the selection process more complex and time consuming. The past researchers have already developed different expert systems for solving material selection problems. Those expert systems were often problem specific, used to estimate criteria weights using subjective perception of the designers and fail to incorporate customers’ requirements into the final products. This paper presents a quality function deployment-based methodology for materials selection that can provide due importance to the voice of customers. An expert system in Visual BASIC 6.0 is also developed to automate the entire material selection procedure. The applicability of the developed expert system is demonstrated while selecting materials for an end milling cutter and a centrifugal compressor impeller.