Redesign methodology for mechanical assembly

Abstract

Design for assembly is the concept of carrying out critical thought early in the design stage to create assembly easement at the production stage. In the aerospace industry, products have very long lives, frequently being optimised rather than introducing new products. This has meant older products, which are stable income generators, have not benefited from the latest design for assembly methods and manufacturing technology suffers from obsolescence. It has been established that a large percentage of overall product cost is determined at the design stage; thus, existing products suffer from preloaded costs. This paper takes existing design for assembly methodologies and analyses them with respect to the unique challenges involved in legacy product redesign. Several novel factors that contribute to redesign analysis are identified such obsolescence impact and a holistic operation difficulty assessment. A tool is developed to identify potential redesign for assembly projects. The tool is demonstrated through the application of real data and comparing against business decisions. The tool was found to provide a strong indication of where profitable projects may be launched.

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) of Digital Fabrication (Dfab) and Additive Manufacturing (AM) in Construction: A Review

“…Numerous DfMA processes and guidelines have been developed to assist designers in implementing this design philosophy to improve design, productivity, and profitability since its inception during World War II and growth extensively during the 1960s-1970s [33][34][35][36][37][38]. DfMA consists of two elements: (1) design for assembly (DfA) and ( 2) design for manufacture (DfM) [39]. DfA focuses on their assembly, whereas DfM focuses mostly on the production of individual components [40].…”

CDFA method: a way to assess assembly and installation performance of aircraft system architectures at the conceptual design

“…While state-of-art DFMA methods require detailed information available at the final stages of product design (El-Nounu et al 2018 ), working at the conceptual level forces designers to use partial and high-level information such as product requirements, functions, etc. Starting from the basic approaches (i.e., functional and modular analysis), few attempts were done to adapt DFMA methods for the conceptual design phase providing as outcome the module analysis for assembly time reduction (Stone et al 2004 ) as well as the assessment of the product layout with the assembly sequence (Favi and Germani 2012 ).…”

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) of Digital Fabrication (Dfab) and Additive Manufacturing (AM) in Construction: A Review

“…Numerous DfMA processes and guidelines have been developed to assist designers in implementing this design philosophy to improve designs, productivity, and profitability since its inception during World War II and growth extensively during the 1960s-1970s [33][34][35][36][37][38]. DfMA consists of two elements: (1) design for assembly (DfA) and ( 2) design for manufacture (DfM) [39]. DfM focuses mostly on the production of individual components, whereas DfA on their assembly [40].…”

“…Robinson et al [47] parameterized a DfA/DfM-based model. Using DfA and other design methodologies, El-Nounu et al [39] redesigned a mechanical assembly using DfA. Also, Manlig and Urban [48] analyzed the link between product development, material flow, and design life cycles for a specific product.…”