A fuzzy constraint satisfaction system for design and manufacturing

We present an interactive constraint satisfaction system for design and manufacturing that supports modeling using fuzzy linguistic variables, terms and operators, fuzzy variables, numbers and operators, and crisp variables, numbers and operators. Constraint propagation is omni-directional and is achieved through value propagation based upon a formal logic and theorem proving. The properties of invertability of some fuzzy operators and the imprecision divergence resulting from repeated operations on fuzzy numbers appear to be manageable and to have utility in design and manufacturing problems. The main contribution of this paper is the description of the fuzzy constraint system, an overview of its theoretical constructs, and a discussion of the issues in using fuzzy mathematics in design and manufacturing