Design manufacturing integration is positively associated with NPD project efficiency, if product design and manufacturing personnel act in truly cooperative ways, overall project efficiency should increase.
Survey of 137 completed NPD projects. The degree of design and manufacturing integration significantly differed across the project groups in the expected direction.
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By using templates, the time required for new product development is drastically reduced. At the same time incorporating computer-aided process planning into the system gives the designer a better understanding of the cost implications of the modified design with respect to manufacturing. The major challenge in implementing of such system is that any changes in the manufacturing facility have to be incorporated in the process plans stored. This can be a tedious job but can be overcome by using hybrid process planning approach instead of variant based approach.
Author experience
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In anticipation of the time and resource demands of mass production, an optimal selection of materials and manufacturing processes is critical. Materials shaping processes are material specific and include forging, casting, investment casting, spin or blow molding.
Authors experience in industrial engineering, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Industrial Engineering.
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Optimal selection manufacturing processes is as important as the selection of materials. The following guidelines help with this selection: 1) Standardization — using standard and pre-shaped components and machines. 2) Raw Materials — minimize component costs and apply raw materials in standard form where possible. 3) Component Design — strive for use of a single machine tool, and ensure design fits within internal manufacturing expertise. 4) Rotational Component Design — ensure that cylindrical surfaces are concentric and plan surfaces are normal to the component axis, and that diameters of external features increase from the exposed face. 5) Non-rotational Component Design — provide a base for work holding and reference. 6) Assembly Design — Design components to ensure that assembly is possible, and that interfacing surfaces are matched and mated. 7) Accuracy and Finish — Specify the widest tolerances and roughest surfaces that will give the required performance.
Authors experience in industrial engineering, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Industrial Engineering.
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Process planning task involves the development of a set of work instructions used for part transformation from its initial to final form. In the proposed system, the process plan module provides detailed information and description of manufacturing processes and machine tools required. The information includes: list of required machines; specific cutting energy for the work material; standard set-up and tear down times; number of tools required; and cost per hour of operation. A search heuristic is developed for the selection of appropriate process plan. If a process plan is not found in the database, a new process plan will be generated based on the defined design features, dimensions and required tolerance for finished product. The information from the developed process plan is used to calculate the manufacturing time and cost.
Author developed template
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Project activity overlap (concurrency) is positively associated with NPD project efficiency. Concurrent engineering, an approach involving the overlap of product and process development activities, is one of the most highly cited techniques to reduce NPD time.
Survey of 137 completed NPD projects. Overlapping of activities (concurrency) was the only practice that differed significantly across the two levels of Efficient projects.
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Prototype web-based system, called WeBID, permitting manufacturers to assess their NPD requirements and match them against a variety of suppliers. The system has application at each stage where suppliers interface.
Case Study. Design and testing of prototype tool for assessing capabilities of various suppliers to identify best match.
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The Boothroyd Dewhurst DfA method seeks to reduce the number of parts by a consideration of manual handling and manual insertion times. This is used to compare two or more design processes and objectively identify the best one.
Experiential. Authors experience and research.
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The Hitachi assembly evaluation method aims to facilitate design improvements by identifying weaknesses in the design process by using an assemblability evaluation score (E) and an assembly cost ratio (K). This is used to compare two or more design processes and objectively identify the best one.
Experiential. Authors experience and research.
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The Lucas DfA analysis is carried out in three sequential stages: functional, feeding and fitting analyses. In functional analysis, components are divided into two groups. Group 'A' parts perform a primary function and Group 'B' components are non-essential, such as fasteners. The design efficiency can be computed using the formula: DE= A/(A+B)*100. The target efficiency should be at least 60%. Feeding analysis is concerned with the problems associated with handling components and sub-assemblies until they are admitted to the assembly system. By answering a group of questions regarding the size, weight, handling difficulties, orientation of a part, its feeding/handling index can be calculated. The feeding/handling ratio is computed as follows: F/H ratio = (Feeding/Handling index)/Number of essential components. The fitting analysis is conducted similarly. The target value is 2.5.
Experiential. Authors experience and research.
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The numeric disassemblability evaluation index is a function of several design parameters that directly or indirectly affect the process of consumer product disassembly. Numerical scores are assigned to each of these parameters depending on the ease with which they can be attained. The following parameters have been addressed: 1. degree of accessibility of components and fasteners 2. amount of force (or torque) required for disengaging components (in case of snap fits) or unfastening fasteners 3. positioning of tools to enable disassembly 4. requirements of tools to enable disassembly 5. design factors such as weight, shape and size of components being disassembled.
Experiential. Authors research.
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Comprehensive disassembly process planning needs to be done if disassembly is to be included in the product at the design stage.
Experiential. Authors experience.
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If your company's strategy is that of an analyzer, one which makes new concepts or innovations more efficient, consider using design tools such as CAD/CAM (computer aided design/manufacturing) to improve your new product development performance.
Survey. Analyzers were found to significantly make more use of CAD/CAM tools than defenders.
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The NPD scale-up and validation stages cannot be omitted to save time or money, particularly when revisions are made mid-project. It is a gamble that usually ends up costing more of both.
Conclusions drawn from case studies and experience.
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The following are product design guidelines when designing for automatic assembly: 1. Self-aligning and self-locating features need to be incorporated into the design to facilitate assembly. Improvement can be achieved by using chamfers, guide pins, dimples, and cone and oval screws. 2. Use the largest and most rigid part of the assembly as a base or fixture where other parts are stack assembled vertically in order to take advantage of gravity. If this is not possible, the assembly should be divided into subassemblies and plugged together at a later stage. 3. Use a high percentage of standard parts. Employing the concept of Group Technology, begin with fasteners and washers. 4. Avoid the possibility of parts tangling, nesting or shingling during feeding. 5. Avoid flexible, fragile and abrasive parts and ensure that the parts have sufficient strength and rigidity to withstand the forces exerted on them. 6. Avoid reorienting assemblies, may require a separate workstation or machine.
Experiential. Authors experience and research.
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The following are some design guidelines that may be incorporated into product design when designing for manual assembly: 1. Eliminate the need for decision-making by the worker, including making final adjustments. 2. Ensure good product accessibility as well as visibility. 3. Eliminate the need for assembly tools or special gauges by designing individual components to be self-aligning and self-locating. Parts that snap and fit together eliminate the need for separate fasteners. This results in speedy as well as more economical assembly. 4. Try to minimize the total number of individual parts if possible. To facilitate this objective, multipurpose components may be used. 5. Minimisation of the number of individual parts may also be achieved by eliminating excess parts and combining two or more parts into one, if functionally possible. 6. Avoid or minimize the need to reorient the part during the assembly process. Ensure that all insertion processes are simple.
Experiential. Authors experience and research.
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Theory of Performance Frontiers suggests that NPD project efficiency is improved through the implementation of changes to project execution processes. Such process changes might apply new technologies, operating procedures, organizational structures, or other practices that remove waste (inefficiency) from design and development activities.
Survey of 137 completed NPD projects. Authors interpretation of theory of performance frontiers as it relates to NPD
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An interesting modification to concurrent engineering is the agile concurrent engineering (ACE) methodology. Its main characteristics are full utilization of resources through resource sharing, agile teams suited for medium or small-sized firms and minimum organization restructuring. In this methodology, a quantitative modeling tool for the concurrent engineering process was developed which describes the mini-circulations and resource sharing within the system. This tool (ESHLEP-N) was a high-level evaluation, stochastic Petri-net model.
Source: Yan and Jiang (1999). In: Kamrani, A., & Vijayan, A. (2006)

Coordination in this sense refers to the problem of ensuring that scarce development resources are allocated efficiently to the different tasks that must be accomplished, that task deadlines are set appropriately and communicated clearly, and that the sequence of planned activities leads to a total project duration that approaches the minimum possible. In the literature on project management, these problems are typically addressed in terms of PERT charts and 'critical path analysis'
Source: Eppen, Gould, and Schmidt (1993). In: Hoopes, D.G., & Postrel, S. (1999)

Suppliers can contribute to the NDP process at multiple points in various ways including: 1) Developing specifications; 2) Identifying interchangeable parts; 3) Planning part standardization and simplification; 4) Suggesting part substitution; 5) Excluding parts with known problems.
Source: . In: Humphreys, P., Huang, G., Cadden, T. (2005)

Use of methods such as design for manufacturing (DFM) to encourage the integration of product and process design decisions has been associated with lower product costs and better conformance quality.
Source: Youssef (1994), Swink (2002), Sanchez and Perez, (2003). In: Swink, M., Talluri, S., & Pandejpong, T. (2006)

Use computer based tools to help shorten design time, reduce costs and improve quality.
Source: Karagozoglu and Brown (1993). In: Koufteros, X. & Marcoulides, G. A. (2006)