Abstract The rapid growth of Internet and information technologies in recent years provides a solution to support and facilitate collaborative product developments among different geographically distributed enterprises。 An effective and feasible tool to aid the collaborative development of injection moulds can be realized by developing an Internet-based mould design system as one of the modules of a collaborative product development system。 This paper presents a prototype Internet-based intelligent design system for injection moulds。 The architecture of the system consists of an interactive KB mould design system embedded in an Internet environment。 A Java-enabled solution together with artificial intelligence techniques is employed to develop such a networked interactive CAD system。 In this system, the computational module, the knowledge base module and the graphic module for generating mould features are integrated within an interactive CAD-based framework。 The knowledge base of the system would be accessed by mould designers through interactive programs so that their own intelligence and experience could also be incorporated with the total mould design。 The approach adopted both speeds up the design process and facilitates design standardization which in turn increases the speed of mould manufacture。 A practical case study is presented to illustrate the operations of the Internet-based mould design system。75757

r 2006 Elsevier Ltd。 All rights reserved。

Keywords: Internet; Knowledge-based expert systems; Injection mould design;   Collaboration

1。 Introduction

Plastic, which is one of the most versatile in the modern age, is widely used in many products throughout the world。 Due to its ability to produce complex-shape plastic parts with good dimensional accuracy and very short cycle times, injection moulding has become the most important process for manufacturing plastic parts in the plastic  industry today。 However, the current plastics industry is under great pressure, due to the globalization of the market, the short life cycle of product development, increasing product persity, high demand of product quality。 To meet such requirements, it is very important for this trade to adopt various advanced technologies which include information and Internet technology, CAD/CAE/CAM integration technology,  concurrent  engineering,  artificial intelligence,

and so on, to effectively aid the development of injection- moulded  product。

In injection moulding, the design of a mould is of critical importance for product quality and efficient processing。 In most cases, quality of mould is responsible for the economics of the entire process。 Injection mould design involves extensive empirical knowledge (heuristic knowl- edge) about the structure and functions of the components of the mould。 Nowadays, mould design faces with increasing deadline pressures and the design itself is predominantly based upon experience of the mould designer。 Mould designers are required to possess thorough and broad experience, because detailed  decisions require the knowledge of the interaction among various para- meters。 Unfortunately, it is presently impossible to cover the growing demand for such experienced designers。 Therefore, intelligent CAD tools that can assist in the various tasks of the mould design process are very important to the productivity of the  mould-making industry。

0736-5845/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd。 All rights reserved。 doi:10。1016/j。rcim。2006。05。003

The growing trend in global manufacturing is to a large extent supported by Internet, information technologies and global marketing。 Nowadays, it is common to see that design, manufacturing and final assembly of a product are made in companies located in different parts of the world。 The various parties concerned would need to share their expertise and experiences during the product development process。 The current progress of Internet and information technologies can provide a solution to support  and facilitate collaborative product developments among dif- ferent geographically distributed enterprises。  Developing an  Internet-based  intelligent  mould  design  system  as one of the module of a collaborative  product  develop- ment system can provide an effective and feasible tool to aid the collaborative development of injection moulds in the small- and medium-sized enterprises to satisfy the stringent requirements of nowadays competitive global market。