An integrated module-based reasoning and axiomatic design approach for new product design under incomplete information environment

Modular design is the mainstream approach in new product design. Module-based reasoning (MBR), which retrieves the most similar modules (MSMs) as the best solution, is a potential approach to reuse previous knowledge in the product development. When relative information is complete, MSMs can be retrieved effectively by the MBR technique. However, the assumption of complete information is not always true in real world. It is usually hard to retrieve MSMs under incomplete information environment. To solve this problem, we propose the use of MBR to retrieve MSMs indirectly when relative information is incomplete, and integrate axiomatic design (AD) and theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) to design a new product. In our proposed method, first, MSMs are retrieved indirectly by calculating the similarities of known product attributes (PAs) between new modules and existing modules of a product. Then, identical modules (similarity = 1) are reused directly, and non-identical modules (similarity < 1) are redesigned using AD and TRIZ. The proposed method can obtain more similar products than the case-based reasoning (CBR) technique, and it can also work under incomplete information environment in new product design. Finally, the proposed method is applied to the design of a blanking mould.