A Knowledge-Based Approach for a CAD-Embedded Tool Preventing Hygienic Design Issues in Food Processing Machinery

Hygienic design concerns the need for making food processing machines and plants compliant with a series of specific requirements aimed at preventing bacteria contamination of food products. The sources available in literature for hygienic design guidelines are mainly represented by guidelines provided by specific organizations (e.g.: EHEDG in Europe and 3A Sanitary Standards in US), but a structured database and an engineering tool allowing for a quick reference by the designer is still missing. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the preliminary work aimed at developing a CAD-based tool able to analyze CAD models of machines and plants and to automatically recognize those features which break some hygienic design rules, allowing therefore the possibility to detect and fix them in an early stage of the design process. This work started from the collection of several guidelines, considering both the literature sources and also the hygienic design knowledge developed within companies. The acquired knowledge is then stored into a database and structured consistently with a specific syntax according to a selected ontology. A case study with two practical examples is exploited to validate the method. Results show the usefulness of the approach to avoid the need for several design reviews and the benefit that a tool implementing this knowledge-based system could bring to the designer.