A Tool to Integrate Design for Assembly During Product Platform Design

To survive in the current market, many companies are moving toward design and development of product families using a platform approach. To effectively develop a family of products, companies have to consider both component and assembly perspectives. The assembly perspective has many issues associated with it for developing common platforms, which includes assemblability evaluation for the entire family. Application of Design for Assembly techniques to evaluate product family will require modifications to the current single product DFA method. In this paper a product family DFA tool and guidelines are presented. The application of this product family DFA tool is illustrated using Walkman® and Coffeemaker product family.Copyright © 2008 by ASME