A decision support system for selection of net-shape primary manufacturing processes

Developments in the capabilities of the manufacturing processes increased the number of processes that can produce a part within the requirements determined by its design and market research. The increased number of processes and unfamiliarity of manufacturing engineers to many new manufacturing processes forces the researchers to develop systematic process selection tools instead of depending on the accumulated human expertise only. In this paper, a net-shape primary manufacturing process selection decision support system (DSS), which is named PROSEL (PROcess SELection), is developed. The developed selection programme eliminates the unsuitable processes step by step by checking a part’s material, annual production quantity, specified shape, thickness and presents the most economical process as the most appropriate net-shape primary process after a final cost analysis. The developed DSS is written in Visual Studio and tested with a great deal of real-life examples. It can be concluded from the tests that the programme provides the same or better primary manufacturing process selection decisions than the practical usage, and it is a very useful support tool for net-shape primary process selections.