ABSTRACT
It is desirable for product development teams to adopt the concurrent engineering approach, where materials and manufacturing processes are considered in the early stages of design and are more precisely defined as the design progresses. The selection process starts with an analysis of the performance requirements based on customer requirements, creating alternative solutions, comparing and ranking alternative solutions, and selecting the optimum solution. This chapter explores several quantitative methods of ranking and selection, including cost per unit property method, weighted property method where weighted properties of each material are summed to give a material performance index, limits on property method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and the fuzzy logic toolbox of the MATLAB®. The top ranking candidates are then used to develop detail designs, which are then compared to arrive at the optimum design–material–process combination. Reliable and consistent sources of material information are essential for successful materials selection. Several databases and Internet sources are cited for these purposes.
