The increasing focus on design for manufacturability (DFM) in
research in concurrent engineering and engineering design is expanding
the scope of traditional design activities in order to identify and
eliminate manufacturing problems during the design stage. Manufacturing a
product generally involves many different kinds of manufacturing
activities, each having different characteristics. A design that is good
for one kind of activity may not be good for another, for example, a
design that is easy to assemble may not be easy to machine. One obstacle
to DFM is the difficulty involved in building a single system that can
handle the various manufacturing domains relevant to a design.
In this paper we propose an architecture for integrating CAD
with DFM. As the designer creates a design multiple critiquing systems
analyze its manufacturability with respect to different manufacturing
domains such as machining, fixturing, assembly, and inspection. Using
this analysis, each critiquing system offers
advice about potential ways of improving the design and an integration
module mediates conflicts among the different critiquing systems in order
to provide feedback to improve the overall design.
We anticipate that this approach can be used to build a
multi-domain environment that will allow designers to create
higher-quality products that can be more economically manufactured. This
will reduce the need for redesign and reduce product cost and lead time.
(Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-94-96
