Cloud-based design system for customized electrical enclosures

The revolutionary transition that Industry 4.0 has brought to the manufacturing industry has increased demand for highly customized products. On the manufacturing end, Industry 4.0 facilitates a production model of high diversity and small batch sizes, and on the design end, it enables the creation of products that meet the diverse needs of consumers. However, the high-customization ability and flexibility come with serious trouble, such as time-consuming design process, possible flaws, and differences between designer and customer, thereby causing difficulty in implementing Industrial 4.0. To solve such problem, this study proposes a cloud-based design system (CBDS) integrating a cloud-based design service platform (CDSP) and a CAD-based automated design system (CADS). We also present a means of integrating the two so that when users submit their product specification requests on the CDSP, the CADS completes the design immediately, and the results are sent back to the clients to view on the CDSP. The proposed CBDS tries to solve the time-consuming, possible human error design process between customer and designer and decrease the total design time from request to actual design. We demonstrate application of the proposed system using electrical enclosures as an example because these products tend towards customization. The proposed system is clearly superior to manual design methods in terms of time.