Integrating precision machining process capability data into product feature design process
Abstract
The objective of a manufacturing firm is to design and make products satisfying customers' needs and desires. The ability of bringing new products to the market is vital to the competitiveness of manufacturing firms. The concepts of design for manufacturing, robust design, and concurrent engineering have attracted a great amount of attention in research and industry because they are aimed to improve product development time and cost. Thus, these concepts are considered by the research community of having the ability to increase the capabilities of manufacturing firms. However, recent business literature has indicated that manufacturing firms are facing a tremendous challenge meeting product delivery deadlines. Scholars and practitioners agreed that one major cause of this challenge is due to insufficient producibility of new products. Scholars and practitioners recommend that integrating manufacturing process capability data into the design process is a crucial way to improve design producibility. Through the analysis results based on collected data, this research confirmed the following literature recommendations: manufacturing data contains critical information applicable to design. However, manufacturing data is not well-structured and user-friendly to designers. Therefore, the design community can not readily use the manufacturing data. The goal of this research is to increase design producibility through the development and validation of a methodology also named as a new design tool. The proposed methodology also named as new design tool has the ability to re-structure manufacturing process capability data through the introduction of seven data attributes. Due to the complexity of manufacturing systems, scholars have identified that even well-structured data is not useful to designers. Therefore, the second functionality of the proposed methodology is translation of data into meaningful information that is useful to designers. The concepts of Capability Map and Capability Map Bank have been introduced in converting data into meaningful information. The third functionality of the proposed methodology also named as new design tool is the capability of early estimation of design producibility during early design phases. The early estimation capability is accomplished by the introduction of two new variables known as Desired Capability Index and Critical Point, and Performance Line which is a graphical tool. Two major streams of contributions have been made by this research. First, the stream of contribution that impacts the research community is: • introduction of quantitative measurement of manufacturability rating using Desired Capability Index and Critical Point • the analysis and recommendations based on extensive data collected from industry The second stream of contributions of this research that expected to impact the industry is • descriptions of the critical functions required to integrate manufacturing data into design process • recommendations on implementation strategy of a new design tool in manufacturing firms In summary, this research developed a methodology also named as new design tool through the voices of practitioners from the manufacturing firms and recommendations from literature. The validation study revealed that the new design tool is on the right track to satisfy industrial needs. This research data and the proposed methodology establish a fundamental baseline to inspire future work in the research and industrial communities.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Kraebber, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Mechanical engineering
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.