Ph.D. Proposal Presentation by Matthew David Bauer
Friday, February 26, 1999

(Dr. David W. Rosen, advisor)

"Computer-Aided Product/Process Synthesis for Assembly, Disassembly, and Service"

Abstract

To survive in a globally competitive market, manufactures are forced to design better products in less time with fewer resources while considering an increasing number of life cycle issues. At present, life cycle issues, such as assembly, manufacture, and disassembly, are addressed through Design for X (DFX) methods, where the prevalent approach is to compile lists of general rules and then encode them in spreadsheets for analysis of detailed product models. While improvements can be achieved through this approach, it is not ideal, and limitations do exist, specifically when examined in the context of a globally competitive market.

To support Design for the Life Cycle, the goal in this dissertation is to develop a formal approach to computer-aided product/process synthesis for Assembly, Disassembly, and Service (ADS). The basic idea is to enable engineers to formulate, analyze, and solve Decision Support Problems that integrate product design and ADS process design activities in a computer-aided design environment. Rather than perform analysis on detailed models or physical prototypes, ADS process requirements will be evaluated by performing analysis directly on CAD product/process models via computer simulation; thus enabling these issues to be addressed earlier in the design process. The fundamental contributions of this dissertation are the integrated product/process design formulation, the models and algorithms to support analysis of ADS process requirements in CAD, and a novel optimization algorithm used to solve the integrated product/process design problems.