Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Civil/Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering
Alejandro Najera-Acosta - New Mexico State University
Co-Author(s): Delia Julieta Valles-Rosales, New Mexico State University (NMSU), NM Blanca Rosa Venegas-Mata, Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
In industrial practice, engineers tend to tackle the design of a complex product by decomposing it into sub-products and attempting to maintain independent solutions for these smaller products. The activities involved on the integral development of a product, need as a preliminary stage a clear definition of the type of product to be designed. Considering the above, a road map including all functional requirements of product design in a manufacturing cell is intended. This research calls for an effective method that provides guidelines for the decomposition of design problem and independent mappings between problems and solutions. The Axiomatic Design (AD) is as good approach to fill this void in the design process. It is based on the existence of four domains: customer, functional, physical and process domain. To evaluate the effectiveness of the design approach, the study was carried out in a Manufacturing Cell (MC) that consists of different workstations. The final product of the AD is a double penholder, which has two different components fabricated and transported in the MC: the assembly base and the pen funnel. The overall design process in the MC includes the continuous processing of information between and within the four domains identified. The results show that the customer domain is characterized by the Customer Attributes (CAs) or needs the user is looking in the product, in this case the penholder, where the CAs are CA1: machined parts, CA2: stable base, CA3: robust design, CA4: interchangeable penholder and CA5: esthetic. Once the CAs are identified and defined, these must be translated in terms of Functional Requirements (FRs) of a product in the functional domain. The FRs of the penholder that can satisfy the CAs are FR1:¬ corrosion free material, FR2: free (loose) pen movement in hole, FR3: body of pen funnel cylindrical and grooved, FR4: acceptable height for pen funnel. FR5: bore and deep of pen funnels, FR6: symmetrical assembly base and FR7: corner without sharp edges. After the FRs are chosen, they are mapped into the physical domain to conceive a design with specific Design Parameters (DPs) that can fulfil the FRs. The associated DPs obtained are DP1: alloy, DP2: ØInternal=0.364 in, DP3: Groove 0.025” x 0.033”↧, DP4: H=2.348 in, DP5: Øpenfunnel=1.200” x 0.430”↧, DP6: 5.500 x 2.361” (LxW), DP7: chamfer 0.1” x 45°. Finally, to produce the product specified in terms of DPs, it is developed a process that is characterized by the Process Variables (PVs) in the process domain. Summarizing, the proposed framework is a logical and systematic axiomatic approach for the product design in cellular manufacturing systems, which makes it easily portable into practice. According to the arrangement obtained, is concluded that it is an uncoupled design, since the obtained sensitivity matrix is diagonal; this means that each FR could be adjusted and controlled by only one DP without affecting any other FR. Future research is focused on manufacture the product specified in terms of DPs, developing a procedure characterized by the Process Variables (PVs) in the process domain.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): I wish to acknowledge the support of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, for allowing us access to its facilities.
Faculty Advisor: Delia Julieta Valles-Rosales, dvalles@ad.nmsu.edu
Role: I worked through all the steps of the axiomatic methodology, I got involved in the area of industrial design where were addressed the concepts of axiomatic design, manufacturing systems, product design, manufacturing cell and Computer Aided Design (CAD). The research contemplates the aim of an effective method that provide guidelines for the decomposition of design problem and independent mappings between problems and solutions. A logical and systematic Axiomatic Approach is proposed for the product design in cellular manufacturing systems to improve design activities, using Industrial Engineering (IE) thinking and techniques.