Trends in Design and Manufacturing

• Traditional Design and Manufacturing Methods

  
  

  From Statistical Quality Design and Control (DeVor, Chang, Sutherland)

  
  

  The past has shown us many methods that were quite unproductive. The traditional approach of "Over the Wall" resulted in the design being thrown back and forth over the wall. It was seen that the Japanese were solving design problems a lot earlier in the production process, than the U.S. was. This resulted in many costs incurred at the proposed project completion. By looking closer at this, it was found that making design and manufacturing work together produced a more efficient and econonomical desig n

  
  

• Concurrent Engineering

  
  

  From Concurrent Engineering Design (Miller)

  
  

  Quality has become the critical issue. Quality, in this context, is everything about the product and its associated manufacturing organization. Some suggest that, traditionally, quality is available but for a higher price. High quality has become a pr e-existing condition for acceptable product performance. Any quality initiative must begin with the product and that product's design. Hence the devleopment of the Concurrent Engineering Design process. The CE design process provides a stable, repeatable process which increased accuracy is achieved in a shorter time with less variation. The following figure outlines the CE design process.

  
  
  

• Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

  
  
  

  Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was originally developed by the Japan Society for Quality Control (JSQC) under the direction of Dr. Yoji Akao. It was begun in 1975. QFD is a methodology that can be used during early project stages to make more customer focus ed decisions, focus project budgets, define project quality, and be responsive to customer's needs [Mallon and Mulligan, 1993]. To aid in this process, the house of quality was developed. The figure belows shows an example of just such a house. The top fl oor lists the design options. The left room lists the customer attributes. The body relates the design options with the customer attributes. The roof is the correlation matrix. An importance factor is found by summing the interation terms. After this is done, hopefully the voice of the customer will be reflected in the final design.

Links to Other Interesting Stuff

    Design in Manufacturing Page