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Publication summary

Author(s): Gerard Kim

Publication date: August 1995

Citation: Gerard Kim: "Comparative Assembly Planning for Assembly Design," Proceedings of the 95 IEEE International Symposium on Assembly and Task Planning, August, 1995.

Key words: assembly planning, assembly design, system integration, concurrent engineering

Availability:

• A paper copy of this document is available by contacting Kristy Thompson [web,email]

Abstract:

Traditionally, the problem of assembly planning concerns determining an order (linear or partial) of a product assembly with respect to geometric, physical, and resource constraints. Recent strides toward concurrent engineering have called for a need for integrating design with assembly planning, and the principles of "Design-for-Assembly (DFA)" have surfaced as one of the key elements, as important design criteria and assembly planning heuristics, that can bridge the two systems. Most assembly planning frameworks and design systems to date, however, do not lend themselves to effective integration with design systems, because conventional assembly planners lack assembly analysis/evaluation in terms of DFA and a dynamic interface with design systems during evolving design phases. That is, a true concurrent engineering platform must be able to, for example, perform preliminary assembly planning during conceptual design stages so that alternative assembly plans can be evaluated and compared as to redesign or drive further stages of design for a promising candidate plan. Similarly, design and analysis of associated assembly operations should proceed in conjunction with design of the artifact to immediately assess the consequence of various design decisions to assembly cost. This paper presents such an integrated system of an assembly planner and a DAF (re)designer. It is more than a mere software integration, since the activities of assembly planning and (re)design are interleaved during the (re)design process under a single framework. In this regard, assembly planning is viewed as an integral part of design (as opposed to a decoupled process). The integration results in both better and more effective ways of doing assembly planning and DFA redesign due to the synergy between the two components. A redesign process (interleaved with assembly planning) of a simple switch box is demonstrated to illustrate these benefits.

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