In the planning of facilities and equipment installation for automotive assembly plants, conflicting demands of process, schedule, and budget often result in compromise of quality in engineering documents. This leads to higher construction costs, potential delays in new model launch, and possible compromise in process design that reduces the competitiveness of a firm.
This paper examines the use of CAD to provide consistently high levels of quality through technical capabilities of the CAD system that are not available in a manual engineering and drafting environment. Automatic dimensioning, precision placement, and common design databases are among the capabilities used.
In addition, the restructuring of the engineering work process to facilitate quality assurance is reviewed. The role of CAD in engineering discipline coordination, concurrent engineering, and change control are explored.
The planning of an actual automotive assembly plant is used as a case history of this approach to engineering and the end results.