AUTOMATIC REINTEGRATION OF PREVIOUSLY MACHINED MATERIALS

Processed material can become obsolete for several ''business'' reasons. Virtually all manufacturing operations accumulate processed materials that can not be used anymore. Current systems to integrate previously machined materials back into the manufacturing process are informal and often not economically feasible. To utilize material effectively, the raw material selection process should include obsolete parts as well as raw stock in their scope of selection. A prototype expert system has been developed in Prolog to manage the material salvage operations. The expert system will determine whether an obsolete part can be used to make an alternative part based on a search through the part design database. The expert system is written in Prolog and uses first-order predicate logic to determine whether one part will fit inside another part. The current prototype handles rotational parts.