Manufacturing Process Simulations in Proactive Design for Quality

A five level process for improved design for manufacturing and assembly has been in use in several vehicle programs. The method developed over a decade ago internally has proven to be very useful as a quality tool in automotive systems with over a dozen archival papers available in the knowledge base professional literature for reference.. Recent expansions of the process has led to the Proactive Design for Quality system in which the emphasis is placed on the timing and intensity of the integrated quality tools and processes to achieve the maximum benefits. This paper is a continuation of this extensive work in automotive development and focuses on the proactive utilization of computer simulation processes to support product creation and manufacturing. Computer simulation to support product creation can take several forms including dimensional tolerance simulation, impact analysis, design for manufacturing and design for assembly.. The major components of the paper are summarized below:

1. 1
   Selected works representing the state-of-the art in manufacturing simulation
2. 2
   Simulation of manufacturing processes
3. 3
   Dimensional/geometry simulations (two case studies)
4. 4
   Laboratory simulation for production system optimization
5. 5
   Systems simulation archetypes for product development processes
6. 6
   Summary and conclusions
7. 7
   Bibliographic references