Controlling the Cold Roll Forming Design Process

This paper was sponsored by a full member (A N Bramley) of The International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP). The paper contains an examination of the cold roll forming design process and how the authors (academic and industrial) have dramatically modified the design process through the application of knowledge based engineering. The work has had a direct impact on the company. Contact: Dr M. Castellucci The Hadley Group, PO Box 92, Downing Street, Smethwick, West Midlands, B662PA, Tel: +44 (0) 121 5551300 The author has been approached by Springer with a view to publishing a book based on this research.The cold roll forming process requires successive forming profiles to be determined and an appropriate number of profiled roll sets to be designed for the product to be rolled. This paper examines the design process and how one company has put in place a design-production control system that allows designs to be ranked in terms of quality and efficiency. In addition, consideration is given to the proportion of time given to each design task and how non-creative design activities can be automated