An Approach for Improving Design of System Variants
Abstract
In the past decades, firms have increased automated assembly operation to improve productivity and reduce human errors; however, manual assembling is still a necessary operation for complex and large-scaled systems that require high reliability. Furthermore, since customers demand more variety in systems, firms increasingly assemble variants of a system in a single assembly line. In this mixed model assembling operation, there are higher chances of assembly errors due to interchanging of geometrically similar parts between system variants. Design for Assembly (DFA) is a design guideline that assists engineers to design systems that are easier to assemble; however, DFA does not provide any guideline for simultaneously designing variants of system being assembled in mixed model operation. Furthermore, incentive schemes for assembly operators that may influence both assembly productivity and errors have not been the scope of DFA research. In this research, the authors conducted assembling experiments with students to investigate how non-geometric part information and incentive schemes affect the assembly productivity and quality in mixed model assembling operation.
Recommended Citation
R. E. Lakshminarayana and S. Takai, "An Approach for Improving Design of System Variants," Proceedings of IMECE2006 2006 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, November 2006, Chicago, Illinois USA IMECE2006, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Jan 2006.
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Assembly Quality; Design for Assembly; Manual Assembling; Mixed Model Manual Assembling
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2006 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2006
