Development of a synthesis engine for the design of products made by process manufacturing

The authors describe a synthesis engine which is part of a system for designing lubricant blends. This engine integrates heuristic search and knowledge based systems and operates independently of the mathematical form of design analysis. The approach is called the decision support problem (DSP) technique. It is being developed and implemented to provide support for human judgment in designing systems that can be manufactured and maintained. All decisions in the DSP technique are categorized as selection, compromise, or a combination of these. A designer controls the exploration of the design space through quantitative and qualitative relationships