INTEGRATIVE DESIGN OF PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE AND ASSEMBLY PROCESS PLAN

This paper proposes an integrative design method of product architecture and assembly process plan by introducing a matrix-based modeling and analysis scheme. Design structure matrix (DSM) has been used to analyze and design the conceptual structure of product architecture. An assembly sequence diagram, such as a fishbone diagram, has been used as a representation scheme of the assembly process in the design for-assembly (DFA) framework. The method of this paper is composed of a DSM-based procedure for generating an assembly sequence plan and its integration with a DSM-based design method of product architecture. In this paper, after general meanings of integration in product design are reviewed, the overall method for integration and mathematical procedure for optimizing an assembly sequence plan by compromising with components modularity are described. The procedure for generating an assembly sequence plan is demonstrated with an example of a desktop stapler, and the integrative design is demonstrated with a case study of air-conditioner units. This paper concludes with some discussion on the role of the proposed framework toward the integrity of product design.