Incorporating production concerns in conceptual product design

Abstract

This paper presents a set of analytical tools that can be used to alter a product's design, manufacturing processes and assembly techniques to increase production rate. The analytical tools obtain these improvements by simultaneously considering each part's geometric attributes and complexity, vendor selection, material and process selection, and capacity planning at the conceptual stage of the product realization process. The method detects and then avoids heavily used resources by indicating which combination of one or more of its components' geometric attributes, manufacturing processes, material and assembly methods should be altered. The method is illustrated with the analysis of an overhead projector. It is shown that production rate can be doubled by either making small changes to a component's geometric attributes or by selecting different manufacturing processes. Neither of these changes affects the functionality of the product.