Design by Fuzzy Association of Needs-to-Functions-to-Structures

The objective of the work presented in this article is to develop and test a new method of automating design by associating needs and wants of the end users to functional requirements and functional requirements to physical structures. This new method of design uses fuzzy associative memory (FAM) to generate an innovative design's components based solely on the desired needs and wants of the customers. The proposed system tries to mimic the thinking process of human designers by using FAM to retrieve the desired parts based on how well a design solution satisfies marketing demands and user specifications. Once a design's components have been selected based on the perceived needs, a new design will be realized by synthesizing the generated parts. Examples are given to show the evolution of new products during the conceptual design.