Mechanical Assembly White Paper
Mechanical Assembly Robustness….by design
Understanding Robust Assembly Processes in PLM
The current state of assembly design processes that guarantee robust products is not well understood throughout industry and has now become a major hurdle in achieving higher quality products at target profitability. This paper provides insight on how industry has evolved to the current ad hoc approach to assembly design and will demonstrate how to systematically define assembly functional requirements, map those to assembly design approaches and functional feature definitions while properly defining the dimensioning and tolerancing controls required to communicate proper design intent.
An assembly is a system and therefore the development of the assembly should be managed in a systemic manner. There are two approaches on design – top down, and bottom up. Top down allows the mechanical system to be architected and the detail assembly interfaces thought out early in design. However, with the lack of good assembly level tools, bottom up design occurs most of the time with parts being fully defined out of context with the assembly functions leading to part designs that need labor-intensive checks and assessments. All of this results in assemblies which are not well centered AND the poor application of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing.
Why Robust Assembly Design?
The 5 Areas of Understanding Necessary to Drive Robust Assembly Design:
1) What is the current state of assembly design processes in most organizations around the world and why the current in-efficient processes are not capable of promoting effective continuous improvement in this area. More…
2) Why system engineering, and specifically mechanical system engineering, exact constraint design approaches are critical to moving engineering back to fundamental math and physics based decisions for product development vs. current simplified engineering analysis practices that lead to severely flawed products.
3) What are the best practices for managing system assembly Key Characteristics (product performance measurements and the assembly packaging constraints necessary to implement a robust design of those functions) along with managing the inter-relationships of the KC’s to the functional dimensioning of parts and the establishment of tolerances guaranteeing a robust product and process design.
4) Why MTA and PVA are fundamental to robust assembly design, the unambiguous specification of optimized GD&T, and discussion about what specifically interferes with company’s abilities to more effectively implement these activities from the initial R&D design intent through actual product production methods.
5) What are the latest commercially available AND industry proven solutions for implementation the next generation robust assembly design processes. See a demonstration of analysis driven CAD creation for functional GD&T, along with the integration of functional assembly design capture and the analysis/optimization methods used in Sigmetrix’ CETOL 6σ Technology Based Solutions.
Sigmetrix has been able to extract experience with the entire range of discretely manufactured products and develop our solutions to fit the unique needs of each of these industries, while merging best practices across industries in a manner unmatched in industry.