CBR for dimensional management in a manufacturing plant

Abstract

Dimensional management is a form of quality assurance for the manufacture of mechanical structures, such as vehicle bodies. Establishing and maintaining dimensional control is a process of adjusting complex machinery for environmental and material changes to manufacture product to specifications within very small tolerances. It involves constant monitoring of the process as well as responding to crises. A good deal of undocumented "folk wisdom" is built up by the dimensional management teams on how to diagnosis and cure problems, but this knowledge tends to be lost over time (people can’t remember, people move on) and is rarely shared from shop to shop. Our project involves establishing a case-based diagnostic system for dimensionalmanagement problems, which can also serve as a system for systematically documenting solved dimensional-control problems. It is intended that this documentation should be meaningful over time and be shareable between plants. The project includes defining a workable case structure and matching ontology, especially to establish the context and generic language to accomplish this. A prototype system has been launched in a vehicle assembly plant.