Quality and Maintainability Frameworks for Changeable and Reconfigurable Manufacturing

Despite the existence of many tools for assessing the product quality in manufacturing systems, there is limited research and/or tools that are concernedwith studying the impact of manufacturing system design on the resulting product quality; especially, at the system development stage. The methodologies that are used for designing the product for quality, especially when considering form, function and variations and their interaction with the manufacturing system design, are rather limited. In the context of reconfigurable manufacturing systems, the designer will be faced with many configuration alternatives, and other changes. From the quality point of view, the designer should have an insight, and most preferably mathematical models, of how design decisions could affect the product quality. Except for the research work that was devoted to investigate the impact of the system layout on quality, until recently the relationship between the quality and the different system parameters were not well defined and quantified. Manufacturing system changeability affects product quality in two respects: 1) manufacturing system design, and 2) maintenance of the manufacturing system equipment. Concerning the first aspect, the changeability in a manufacturing system affects many dimensions of the product quality. Some of these effects are positive and others are negative. A framework is presented for the complex relationship between quality, and the changes in reconfigurable manufacturing parameters. Details are also in the first Author’s publications and other publications referred to in this Chapter. With regards to maintainability, it is an important concern in choosing the manufacturing system parameters. A maintainability strategy based on axiomatic design and complexity reduction is presented using the relationships between the manufacturing system parameters and the multi-objectives for optimizing quality, cost and availability. This should lead to maintenance systems that are less complex and adaptive to the changes in manufacturing.

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