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Selecting chemical products in a textile finishing facility is an arduous task affected
time constraints and limited
availability of knowledgeable personnel within the facility. Ideally, the process involves
the evaluation of chemical
products based upon both vendor and product criteria. In practice, however, the selection
may be based upon only the
vendor criteria or product criteria. The evaluation often follows no planned course and
thus product selection occurs
using varying criteria. Often there is no consistency in the decision-making process. It
is possible for one individual
from a small group of knowledgeable individuals to make all the decisions in regard to
chemical product selection. The
selection process is likely very subjective and therefore dependent on the interests of
the individual.
This thesis presents research in which a knowledge-base software system was developed to
provide structure and
formalism to the chemical selection process within the textile finishing facility. The
research was conducted in
cooperation with Thomaston Miffs, Inc. The knowledge-base software system developed is
called Chem-Select. The
ChemSelect knowledge-based system represents the rules, procedures, criteria, and
formalized expertise exercised by
production managers, a purchasing manager, and technical staff in selecting chemical
products. Chem-Select evaluates
a product based upon vendor factor such as financial capability, customer service, product
quality, and technical
competence. Product factors such as environmental impact, performance, and quality are
considered. Of all the factors
considered in a Chem-Select evaluation, less than one percent is subjective.
Information elicited from the vendors, the purchasing department, department managers, and
plant technical staff is
used as input in the evaluation process in ChemSelect. Chem-Select is designed to allow
the user to control many of the
system variable in an evaluation; therefore particular aspects of an evaluation can be
highlighted for comparison. The
result produced by Chem-Select is a numerical score on a scale of 0 to 100 that can be
used for direct comparison of
several competitive products.