Ford Global Technolgoies, LLC

Ford Motor Company Limited

Peter Richard Sferro

Robert Lewis Humphrey

Sean Bogue O'Reilly

Alan L Clark

Ali Kamrani

Gregory John Burek

A methodfor designing and purchasing a product which allows the respective product and cost information associated with a variety of potential suppliersto be automatically queried.

Method for designing and purchasing a product

Method of simultaneously carrying out manufacturing and product engineering integrated with knowledge networking. The method comprises: (a) creating a logic modeller by (i) identifying elements of an engineering project and syntactically arranging such elements in a logic sequence based on engineering functions, (ii) ascertaining uniform meaning for such elements and engineering functions to allow for interdisciplinary communication, (iii) gathering existing knowledge pertinent to such elements and engineering functions, and encoding such gathered knowledge into terms according to uniform meanings, and (iv) programming a computer memory template with such logic sequence and with attached data bases of such encoded existing knowledge; and (b) operating said logic modeller through a direct engineer that: (i) requests review of initial input specifications of an inchoate design that results in an analysis by the modeller to indicate rule or constraint violations of the gathered knowledge, and (ii) interacts with the analysis in response to such indications to converge on acceptable or improved engineering design functions.

Simultaneous manufacturing and product engineering integrated with knowledge networking

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MI, United States of America

Peter Richard Sferro