Design for assembly

Over the last two hundred years, much effort has been devoted to devising, developing and improving the equipment which manufacturers use to produce individual parts. This has resulted in a manufacturing capability in which there is little scope for improvement, and in general the main efforts in part manufacture are rightly concerned with work organisation and job scheduling in the small to medium batch size production industries. Further, in parts manufacture, there is a wealth of literature on the technology of manufacture whereas in assembly, by comparison, there is virtually none.