Masters Abstracts (1993)

HWANG, YU-LIN
(August 1993), CA

Email: karl@cameonet.cameo.com.tw

An Adaptable Knowledge Base For Design for Manufacturability by an Object-Oriented Approach

It has been a challenge for software engineers to design and create an adaptable expert system that would allow the growth and evolution of expert systems. This research used a combination of technologies to implement a software system for this task. Among these technologies, object- oriented technology serves as the backbone of the adaptable expert system. While object-oriented concepts are an ideal scheme for knowledge representation, there is substantial interest in its use in the design and development of knowledge based systems.

This research focused on building an adaptable knowledge base for a 'design for manufacturability' environment through the use of object oriented technology. An adaptable expert system environment has been built. This software system includes a rule editor, an inference engine and a group of functional modules. This primary concept used in this research is the separation of the inference engine, the knowledge base, and knowledge specific functions to facilitate updateability.

Three systems were developed in this research. They are the process advisor, the intelligent control system (or the ICS) and the diagnosis system. The process advisor (the first system) provides for the setup of the stencil printing process. The ICS (the second system) was developed to control the stencil printing process. Statistical control techniques have been applied to determine the quality of the print process. A unique fuzzy control and topology mapping algorithm is used to exercise control over the process. The diagnosis system (the third system) is used to troubleshoot the process when the ICS is unable to control the printing process.