Design for Assembly within Concurrent Engineering

Summary Design For Assembly (DFA) is identified as an important strategy for the reduction of product manufacturing costs. In this paper the background to Design For Assembly (DFA) is described, and a method for the representation of DFA knowledge adopted. The problem of Computer Aided Assembly Process Planning (CAAPP) is also addressed, and an approach using the disassembly sequence is, developed using product information generated using a feature-baaed CAD system. This feature information is also used to generate a graph-type representation of the product structure for use in an integrated CAAPP/DFA system.