Exploring and Adapt! – Extending the Adapt! Method to Develop Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

Automotive production is faced with the challenge of bringing new products to market faster, with decreasing turn-around times, meaning production must be continually changing to accommodate new products. This paper proposes an approach to decrease a product’s time-to-market, by increasing the efficiency of automotive assembly unit design. Providing designers with conceptual information about future vehicle models early in the product design process, could shift the design start forward and enable a more efficient transition process. Large automotive companies work on vehicle design and development for years before a product is ready for production. If during these earlier stages of product design, significant changes are identified and communicated to production designers, the manufacturing system design can get a jump start with an early exploration phase. A method exists, which uses the Axiomatic Design theory to develop Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems through a modular breakdown. A similar method Adapt! employs Axiomatic Design and Scrum to develop changeable or adaptable production systems. This paper proposes to extend the Adapt! method to include an exploration phase, which through early communication, provides an overview of the required design process, and enables faster identification of the critical design challenges. A case study is performed by analysing a currently produced vehicle and its future electric version.

Automation of Technological Processes

“…These methods can be called External Technology Searches (ETS), and aim to bring new technologies into a company. ETS is an umbrella term to cover many of the existing methods in the field [7].…”

Complexity in the Kitchen

“…3 The first reference to analyzing turkey storage and cooking the authors were able to find was from 1962 in [30]. 4 who is a co-author on one of the meat thermal models Rather than be distracted by TRIZ's enthusiasm, let us consider the problem in an Axiomatic Framework:…”

“…Axiomatic Design has been used in highly technical realms and creative areas. Technical applications include: Shape Memory Allow actuator testing [1], Industry 4.0 Human-Robot interfacing [2], industrial safety practices [3], and re-configurable manufacturing system design at Mercedes-Benz [4]. Nontechnical interest comes in the areas of football 1 [5], diabetes treatment [6], university department organization [7,8], special education curricula [9] and interactive art [10].…”

External Technology Searching Methods - A Literature Review

“…The automotive industry is being pushed to be more flexible in accommodating re-design and implementing change, however, there is limited research in the area of implementing design methods into industrial settings (Blessing & Chakrabarti, 2009). Kujawa et al (2018) describes the necessity of enabling changes within the life cycle of a production unit to facilitate improvements in the re-design and change process. The more flexibility that can be built into the production unit, the easier it will be to address changes to accommodate production of future models.…”