ABSTRACT
There are three very important and inextricably linked elements in the product development cycle that greatly affect the product’s cost, time to market, plant productivity, degree of manufacturing automation, producibility, and reliability. These are assembly methods, manufacturing processes, and material selection. As will be discussed subsequently, reducing the number of parts that comprise the component or product is one means of improving its ease of assembly and reducing cost. This reduction is often accomplished by combining several of the individual parts into a single piece, which, in turn, may decrease the number of different materials used in the product. Some manufacturing processes that can be used to accomplish this are casting, injection molding, and sheet-metal bending. Each of these processes works better with certain materials than with others, and with certain shapes, sizes, and geometric attributes. Therefore, one must consider these three elements more or less concurrently. Furthermore, assembly considerations greatly impact, and are impacted by, maintenance (serviceability), testability, and inspection requirements, as discussed in Section 10.3. In addition, how assembly is to be performed is also inuenced by, and will inuence, the product’s architecture, degree of integration, and the degree of modularity employed as discussed in Section 6.3.
