An integrated graphical user interface (GUI) for concurrent engineering design of mechanical parts

Concurrent engineering: Automation, tools, and techniques

Recently, concurrent engineering (CE) has become one of the major conceptual approaches in reducing product developing time. Design for manufacturing (DFM) and design for assembly (DFA) are two of the major areas in CE. Several researchers have integrated a CAD/CAM system and a knowledge-based system to implement DFA and DFM concepts. However, the incompatibility of the data representation methods between CAD/CAM and knowledge-based systems is the major issue in this integration method. In this paper, an approach is proposed to find the minimum wall thickness of a part from its boundary representation (B-Rep) model. These data can then be directly utilized by a knowledge-based system to analyse the manufacturability of thin wall parts such as injection moulded or diecast parts.

This paper presents ongoing work to standardize model-based system engineering as a complement to point design development in the conceptual design phase of deep space missions. It summarizes two first steps towards practical application of this capability within the framework of concurrent engineering design teams and their customers. The first step is standard generation of system sensitivities models as the output of concurrent engineering design sessions, representing the local trade space around a point design. A review of the chosen model development process, and the results of three case study examples, demonstrate that a simple update to the concurrent engineering design process can easily capture sensitivities to key requirements. It can serve as a valuable tool to analyze design drivers and uncover breakpoints in the design. The second step is development of rough-order- of-magnitude, broad-range-of-validity design models for rapid exploration of the trade space, before selection of a point design. At least one case study demonstrated the feasibility to generate such models in a concurrent engineering session. The experiment indicated that such a capability could yield valid system-level conclusions for a trade space composed of understood elements. Ongoing efforts are assessing the practicality of developing end-to-end system-level design models for use before even convening the first concurrent engineering session, starting with modeling an end-to-end Mars architecture.

As products become ever more diversified, their life cycles are becoming shorter. To reduce production costs, increased process automation and concurrent design are priorities. Therefore, a collaborative integrated design system is crucial in the mold design and manufacturing process. This research develops a collaborative navigation system for concurrent mold design within the computer-aided design (CAD) browser, using Pro/Web.Link as the core tool. Providing both concurrent engineering and collaborative design functions, the navigation system is capable of assisting designers in accomplishing 3D mold development efficiently and accurately with the help of the standard component library and design decision-making system. The results show significant time savings over other mold design process methodologies.

Time and cost reduction during product development is important to meet the competitiveness in the market. Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) plays a key role in product development, especially in industries like aerospace, wherein variety in component geometry is more. Parts count reduction is one of the basic principles of DFMA. Design for Manufacture (DFM) considerations lead to simplification and standardization of design and manufacturing processes. It also facilitates integration of function and form and optimizes the workflow. This paper outlines the DFMA considerations to sheet metal parts considering factors such as standardization of geometric shapes and integral part design through parts count reduction. A methodology for integration of parts is presented, which is partly interactive, to evolve an integral design from a multipart sub-assembly. The method proposed is applied to a sheet metal parts sub-assembly, and it also compares the time and cost of manufacture and assembly.

Design for Manufacturing, Assembly, and Disassembly is important in today’s production systems because if this aspect is not considered, it could lead to inefficient operations and excessive material usage, both of which have a significant impact on manufacturing cost and time. Attention to this topic is important in achieving the target standards of Industry 4.0 which is inclusive of material utilisation, manufacturing operations, machine utilisation, features selection of the products, and development of suitable interfaces with information communication technologies (ICT) and other evolving technologies. Design for manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) have been around since the 1980’s for rectifying and overcoming the difficulties and waste related to the manufacturing as well as assembly at the design stage. Furthermore, this domain includes a decision support system and knowledge base with manufacturing and design guidelines following the adoption of ICT. With this in mind, ‘Design for manufacturing and assembly/disassembly: Joint design of products and production systems’, a special issue has been conceived and its contents are elaborated in detail. In this paper, a background of the topics pertaining to DFM, DFA and related topics seen in today’s manufacturing systems are discussed. The accepted papers of this issue are categorised in multiple sections and their significant features are outlined.

An Internet-enabled integrated system for co-design and concurrent engineering

This research focuses on the development of a quantitative intelligent system for implementing concurrent engineering design. The paper first discusses the task of concurrent engineering design and the basic requirements for conducting integrated concurrent engineering design. The proposed quantitative intelligent system approach combines qualitative reasoning, based upon design and manufacturing knowledge, and quantitative evaluation and optimization, conducted using design information and manufacturing data generated in the knowledge-based reasoning. The method allows considerations on non-operating principle aspects of a product to be incorporated into the design phase, such as manufacturing, maintenance, service, recycle, etc., with an emphasis on production costs. The proposed method serves as a convenient software tool for gathering information required in the concurrent engineering design process and integrates tasks from different parts of the product development life cycle, particularly function design, manufacturability analysis and production cost estimation. A prototype software system is developed based upon this method using Smalltalk-80. In the prototype system, concurrent engineering design is carried out by: (1) describing and representing design requirements; (2) generating feasible design candidates and evaluating their design functions; (3) representing design geometry; (4) finding the associated production processes and predicting the production costs of each feasible design; and (5) identifying the costeffective design that satisfies given design requirements and requires minimum production costs.

PurposeThe speed of new product development (NPD) has been a key factor in a firm's degree of competitiveness. The tools and philosophy of quality management have been widely used to improve and control product quality. However, there is a lack of literature on the relationship between quality management and NPD. This paper aims to report on a study that investigates the influence of quality management on the speed of NPD.Design/methodology/approachThe philosophy of quality management refers to total quality management (TQM). Tools for quality management include teamwork, continuous improvement (CI), value analysis (VA) and quality function deployment (QFD). This study begins by comparing literature in concurrent engineering (CE) and TQM, which leads to several common principles and five hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested using survey data from 700 manufacturing companies in 20 countries.FindingsThe research reveals that TQM, Team, VA and QFD are positively correlated with the speed of NPD, meaning that the tools and philosophy of quality management have a positive influence on the speed of NPD. However, no relationship is found between CI and the speed of NPD.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper tests hypotheses using survey data. It reveals the empirical relationship between quality management and the speed of NPD but does not provide details regarding the mechanism of influence between the two. Consequently, case studies should be conducted in the future to probe into the details. Additionally, new quality methods like Six Sigma can also be included in a future study, since Six Sigma covers both quality and NPD.Practical implicationsThis study proposes that companies that have implemented TQM and other quality management tools will have a better foundation for implementing new NPD approaches like CE and design for manufacturing and assembly. This is especially encouraging for those original engineering manufacturing (OEM) firms that would like to change from OEM to original design manufacturing/original brand manufacturing (ODM/OBM). OEM companies typically implement TQM but invest very little in NPD.Originality/valueThis paper fills the gap in research exploring the links between quality management and NPD. It addresses the concern over whether quality management may hinder NPD. The critical issues for implementing quality management such as culture change, learning, change management, and team building can all be applied to implementing NPD methods such as CE. The result also supports the concept of “design the quality into products”. It is beneficial for employees in quality and NPD to share and work together.

Design for control: A new perspective on process and product innovation

Concurrent engineering is an important philosophy in achieving better time to market in new product development. While the use of design teams is achieving some success there is a need for modern software tools which support the design process to be radically improved. This paper provides a contribution in the area of decision support systems based on the use of product and manufacturing models to provide appropriate information. Typically design for manufacture systems provide only support for one process e.g. design for assembly, design for machining. However, when the full breadth of design for manufacture is considered there are many aspects which must be addressed. This leads to the need for information systems to be able to support multiple views of a product, where each view provides the appropriate representation to support one manufacturing perspective. This paper discusses the requirements of a reasoning system which is able to provide multiple views of a product and which can provide mechanisms to move from one viewpoint to another. The research focuses on injection moulding and considers viewpoints such as product functionality, product mouldability, mould design elements and mould manufacturing viewpoints. A case study product is discussed to illustrate the approach being used.

North American undergraduate mechanical engineering design education has failed to meet the needs of industry in educating students in effective design philosophies typified by the concurrent engineering design philosophy. Current programmes emphasize traditional engineering analysis courses, leaving little room for truly educating the students in the fundamentals of mechanical engineering design. This paper uses the concurrent engineering design paradigm to design a programme for the education of students in mechanical engineering design. The basics of concurrent engineering design are outlined, the failings of typical design education stated, and an exploration of the required features of a new design curriculum presented.

Design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is attracting the attention of designers, practitioners, and construction project stakeholders. Digital fabrication (Dfab) and design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) practices are found in current need of further research and development. The DfMA’s conceptual function is to maximize the process efficiency of Dfab and AM building projects. This work reviewed 171 relevant research articles over the past few decades. The concepts and the fundamentals of DfMA in building and construction were explored. In addition, DfMA procedures for Dfab, DfAM, and AM assembly processes were discussed. Lastly, the current machine learning research on DfMA in construction was also highlighted. As Dfab and DFAM are innovated, practical DFMA techniques begin to develop to a great extent. Large research gaps in the DfMA for Dfab and DfAM can be filled in terms of integrating them with product structural performance, management, studied cases, building information modeling (BIM), and machine learning to increase operational efficiency and sustainable practices.

Concurrent engineering is the process of reducing the total project delivery time by overlapping activities that normally occur sequentially. The benefits are a shortening of delivery time and a possible reduction in overall costs. However, there are potential risks to overlapping dependent activities. The interaction between an upstream activity and a downstream activity relies on how information evolves in the upstream activity and how sensitive the downstream activity is to that changing information. This implies that if an upstream activity is slow to evolve information and a downstream activity is highly sensitive to changing information, the risk in overlapping these activities will be higher than activities that are fast to evolve and not as sensitive to changing information. The risk can manifest in rework, or reperforming some aspect of the downstream activity because of the evolution of the upstream activity and the amount of overlapping used. This research developed computer simulation models to better understand the potential risk of rework. The simulation models allow for overlapping different types of slow- and fast-evolving upstream activities with high- and low-sensitivity downstream activities using overdesign and early release strategies and different amounts of overlapping. The overall findings show that simulations of overlapping activities yield a reliable approach to modeling concurrent engineering activities. The simulations provide information on the probability of rework based on the different combinations of evolution, sensitivity, overlapping strategy, and the percent amount of overlapping used between the upstream and downstream activity. The use of computer simulations and modeling of overlapping activities therefore allows engineers and managers to understand the potential risks and what strategies to apply when utilizing concurrent engineering on a project.

Summary form only given. One of the trends in today's business environment is that of teams. One system for implementing teams is concurrent engineering. Several methodologies have been developed to utilize and manage concurrent engineering principles in the manufacturing industries. Process value estimation methodology (PVE) allows management to target processes that are ripe for reengineering and prevents cost reduction that decreases value. design for assembly (DFA), is another technique that increases the value of product by optimizing design through cost reduction focusing on the assembly process. Our study attempts to apply the PVE and DFA reengineering methodologies to the restaurant industry. We do this by exploring the product/process methods used in the restaurant industry and their relation to the product/process methods used in manufacturing. Questionnaires were distributed randomly to 150 Alien County restaurants and were to be answered by management respondents only. Although we rejected our hypothesis that the PVE and DFA methodologies are readily transferred to the service industry, it is clear that the reengineering techniques currently adhered to resemble some aspects of both methodologies. This discovery suggests that perhaps the service industry, or the restaurant industry, may want to define its own set of methodologies based on the unique criteria involved in redesigning or creating service-related processes/products.