Intelligent Decision Support System for Ergonomic Product Design
In general, computer tools for ergonomic CAD do not assist designer with higher level advice when performing ergonomic design. Designer has to possess expert knowledge and experience in many fields of engineering design including ergonomics in order to deliver successful designs. Such multi-levelexperts are rare and usually occupied. Two alternative ways are used to substitute these experts: teams of experts covering different areas of knowledge are established or some intelligent computer programs with expert knowledge are applied. In the second case, expert knowledge has to be collected, organized and encoded into the knowledge base of the system. An intelligent decision support system has been developed in order to overcome this bottleneck. This paper presents a knowledge base, containing ergonomic design knowledge specific for hand tools design. A pneumatic hammer handle design is used as a case study to show how ergonomic design knowledge built in the system is used to improve the ergonomic value of the product.