Keywords
Citation
Andrew, A.M. (2005), "IPA: Concepts and Applications in Engineering", Kybernetes, Vol. 34 No. 5, pp. 743-744. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920510595436
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
This is an extremely comprehensive and thoughtful survey of the possibilities of computer assistance to a design engineer, and their realisation in an “Intelligent Personal Assistant”. The undertaking of an engineering project is considered in detail, from initial jottings through successive refinement requiring reference to data and catalogues, and employment of software facilities for computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided engineering (CAE), as well as consultation with colleagues.
It is acknowledged that details of the procedure are highly individual, and are not normally recorded fully in formal reports. Neither are details of the experience gained. One function of an IPA is to provide a personal record, tailored to individual needs and idiosyncrasies.
Another function is to provide ready access to data sources and to relevant software including facilities for CAD and CAE. As an adjunct to this, the IPA can keep a record of what sources were used in each collaborative session of the engineers, and can arrange that these are readily available next time.
Surprisingly, there is no indication of a way of purchasing or downloading a complete system, and the author merely mentions that he used a database environment and Visual Basic. His reticence about offering a system may be an expression of his insistence that an IPA should be tailored to individual needs. At any rate, the requirements are analysed in impressive detail and it would certainly be a strong recommendation for a complete IPA to be able to say it was fully compliant with the recommendations here.
The chapter on optimisation is particularly impressive and multi‐objective operation is treated very fully, with reference to Pareto optimality and the possibility of ordering the priority of objectives, and comparison of alternative strategies. It is mentioned that the author's implementation can interact with databases to explore alternative solutions to subproblems.
There is a very great deal of valuable material here, though not an actual IPA available “off the peg”.