Integrated Concurrent Engineering Based Approach for Electric-Fan Design

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Hsiao, Shih-Wen

Affiliations: Department of Industrial Design, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan 70101, ROC, Tel. +886 6 275 7575, ext. 54330; Fax: +886 6 274 6088

Abstract: The improvement of design quality and production efficiency, and reduction in product developing lead time and production cost are key factors in developing a new product. A concurrent engineering based method for developing an electric fan starts from customer's needs analysis and ends at selecting the best assembly sequence is addressed in this article. In this methodology, the functional structure of a product is constructed based on customer's needs with the design for function (DFF) method. The design concepts are created by using the morphological chart, and the optimal design concept is then selected with Pugh concept selection matrix. The optimal assembly sequence is obtained by integrating the techniques of design for assembly (DFA), liaison-sequence analysis, establishment of subassemblies, and comparing the required reorientation numbers of parts and difficulties of assemblies based on some criteria and constraints by using a computer program constructed in this study. The results show that the number of feasible assembly sequences for the selected design alternative is reduced from 1810 to 1, which is suggested to the manufacturing engineer.

DOI: 10.3233/ICA-1999-6301

Journal: Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 171-188, 1999