Design for assembly

It is necessary for American manufacturing companies to improve their production capabilities of consumer oriented mechanical and electro-mechanical products to reestablish its competitive position within world manufacturing. Selective automation, particularly in assembly operations, that has been properly designed can greatly enhance the productive output and quality of many products. Recent manufacturing experience has shown that automating the assembly of products which were designed for manual assembly without substantial modification to the product is difficult and often fails to meet the demand for quality products at a competitive price therefore a system to aid the designer during product development to ensure assemblibility is needed.;There are currently two recognized systems of "Design for Automated Assembly" which can be used for product redesign. The first system was developed by Geoffrey Boothroyd and Peter Dewhurst at the University of Rhode Island, and the second is referred to as the "axiomatic method".;The Boothroyd Dewhurst method is an analytical system designed to evaluate the potential of automating an existing product or for evaluating new product designs after engineering drawing or prototypes have been developed.;The second well known "Design for Assembly" system is referred to as the "axiomatic method". The axiomatic method is a set of design guidelines which when applied to the initial design phase of product development or redesign aids the designer in developing a product with high automation potential.;This research investigation compares the application of the axiomatic and the analytical methods of design for assembly to determine the applicability of each system at various phases of product development and further proposes a simplified analytical method of design for assembly. Finally this investigation proposes the development of a neural network design for assembly method based on the results of this study as well as the previous research of Nam P. Suh and Christopher Alexander.