ABSTRACT
This chapter lists some general guidelines for product design strategy and presents assembly strategy, fastening strategy, assembly motions, and test strategy. Combining parts is a technique that can be used to reduce the part count and simplify assembly, provided the combined parts do not get so big and complex that they require expensive tooling or large mega-machine tools. If guidelines are to be used as checklists, they should be worded to optimize usefulness in checklists. Then the team and management would note on the checklist whether the guideline has been obeyed or how much the product deviates from a certain goal, say, zero or 100%. Each part not only must be designed to fit in its destination location, but also must have an assembly path for entry into the product. Press fits add tolerance challenges to both parts, resulting in a high potential for things to go wrong.
