| To meet a rapidly increasing demand for innovation in the entire engineering process, concurrent engineering is being employed in many areas. This research addresses information management issues for concurrent engineering of printed circuit board assemblies (PCA).;In this research we propose a formal framework to feed manufacturing information back to design by updating design rules based on actual manufacturing experience. Typically, changes or additions to design rules, when they are a result of manufacturing experience, are effected in an ad hoc way by committee. The new design rule updating paradigm captures quantitative relationships between product defects during manufacture and the associated product and process design parameters using statistical or neural network models, and generates design rule updates based on the developed model. The new paradigm was implemented and validated using a realistic example in PCA manufacturing.;This research developed a prototype system for automated design rule updating based on the new paradigm. This research also proposed an effective data structure supporting the automated system. By automating and formalizing the design rule updating process, design rule updating can be integrated with a computer-based concurrent engineering platform. In summary, this research presents a comprehensive framework for manufacturability assessment and feedback. Combining a design rule updating system, a design evaluation system, and design and manufacturing databases, the framework provides an important element in a concurrent engineering system. |
