Assessing the manufacturability of early product designs using aggregate process models

Designers have no way of establishing, and hence controlling, the likely production consequences of design decisions during the early stages of new product introduction. Aggregate process modelling is a newly developed methodology for the identification and manufacturability assessment of production routeings for partially specified product configurations. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in the close integration of process models with existing product and resource information and the provision of feedback regarding manufacturing issues to control downstream design processes. A description of the methods for early estimation of product manufacturability and their potential application in a design support system, able to prevent the progression of design ideas that would be costly, difficult or even impossible to manufacture, is presented in this paper.