| Product Design is the most important link of entire process of development, whileonly five percent of the cost of the product, but it affected seventy percent of the cost of theproduct. The base station antenna production mainly rely on manual assembly, these kindsof products are the most suitable for DFMA technology.This research papers associate DFMA software with an antenna structuraloptimization process, input design concept into software for analysis after preliminarydesign completed, optimized design concept for improving assemblability and reduce partcounts; then re-input modification concept into software for analysis again, re-modified thedesign concept based on software analysis result and then re-input, the cycle again until thedesign has been continuously improved on better assemblability and less part counts.The new design approach--DFMA software associate with product developmentprocess in antenna structure optimization achieved remarkable results, whatever at actuatorassembly module or antenna assembly module, the final design are simplified in varyingdegrees compare to the original design, total parts counts reduced about30%, assemblywork time reduced about30%, total cost saving about4%because the high-priced RFcomponents are difficult to optimization.Design optimization for DFMA-based are suitable for applications in reducing thenumber of parts, improving assemblability, reducing total cost of product, but needfrequently discussion with production engineer and process engineer, the communicationefficiency will impact the optimization cycle time and quality. |
