The Manufacturing Advisory Service:: web-based process and material selection

The Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) is a concept level manufacturing process and material selection tool, geared toward educating designers in basic process capabilities and informing experienced designers about new technologies. The designer enters a dialogue with the MAS, answering questions about production quantity, typical tolerances, physical size, overall shape and cost requirements. At each step along the way, the user is presented with an updated, ranked list of manufacturing options. The list updates as soon as values are entered, and the underlying criteria that contribute to the rank are not obscured. This list can then be combined with material selection, resulting in an optimized matching of process/material pairs to the total set of requirements. The MAS is interlinked with web pages of instructions, tutorials, and references explaining the program, fabrication processes and material choices. The MAS performs its calculations using capability data from a remote database. The current version of the Manufacturing Advisory Service is located at: http://cybercut.berkeley.edu/mas2/.