Interpreting Product Designs for Manufacturability Evaluation

Abstract

The ability to quickly introduce new quality products is a decisive factor in capturing market share. Because of pressing demands to reduce lead time, analyzing the manufacturability of the proposed design has become an important step in the design stage. In this paper we present an approach for evaluating the manufacturability of machined parts.<P>Evaluating manufacturability involves finding a way to manufacture the proposed design, and estimating the associated production cost and quality. However, there often can be several different ways to manufacture a proposed design - so to evaluate the manufacturability of the proposed design, we need to consider different ways to manufacture it, and determine which one best meets the manufacturing objectives.<P>In this paper we describe a methodology for systematically generating and evaluating alternative operation plans. As a first step, we identify all machining operations which can potentially be used to create the given design. Using these operations, we generate different operation plans for machining the part. Each time we generate a new operation plan, we assign it a manufacturability rating. The manufacturability rating for the design is the rating of the best operation plan.<P>We anticipate that by providing feedback about possible problems with the design, this work will be useful in providing a way to speed up the evaluation of new product designs in order to decide how or whether to manufacture them.