Session: 02-01-01: Product and Process Design

Paper Number: 145345

145345 - Experimental Investigation of the Influence of Restrictive and Dual Methods for Design for Manufacturing 

Considering manufacturing requirements already in the design phase still poses major challenges in Industry 4.0. The problem is that most design methods for manufacturing-orientated design only consider the restrictions of manufacturing processes. This shows that, there is a lack of design methods and successful strategies that can be applied to realize the potential of manufacturing processes.

Research in context of engineering education with conceptual design methods for Design for Manufacturing (DfM) has presented a classification of restrictive, opportunistic and dual methods, which were primarily described by design for additive manufacturing (DfAM). Restrictive design methods are needed to consider the (1) manufacturability, whereas the application of opportunistic methods recommends utilizing the solution space to solve the technical problem. Opportunistic methods are intended to reduce the (2) manufacturing effort. In the state of research, the comparison of the impact of restrictive, opportunistic and dual design methods on the design outcome was compared with undergraduate students in the design for additive manufacturing.

This points at a lack of extensive research to apply restrictive and dual methods to other manufacturing processes with a comparison of two groups: experienced design engineers and students. The authors experimentally investigate the influence of restrictive and dual methods for DfM in the context of design for sheet metal (DfSM). The present experimental study examines this influence with 74 participants, of whom were 46 students and 28 design engineers. The participants were exposed to either a restrictive method or a dual method before working on a design task. The final design outcomes (concepts) obtained by the participants were evaluated with regard to (1) manufacturability, and (2) manufacturing effort. The results show that the dual method, in comparison to the restrictive method, tends to positively influence the manufacturability of students´ group concepts. The manufacturing effort of the design outcomes for the design engineers’ group was significantly reduced when using the dual design method compared to the restrictive design method. At the same time, this difference was not observed among the students. The students' group concepts also showed the following deficits: 1) the number of parts remained high and 2) the optimization of weld seams was not sufficiently applied.

The dual method provides specific method content for precisely these difficulties with regard to manufacturing effort. From this it can be concluded that the students either did not read or did not understand the dual design method, so that they were unable to apply the method content. This study revealed that dual methods could elevate design engineers´ potential to develop designs considering manufacturing. The best practices of design engineers can hardly be taught explicitly because best practices are the result of continuous improvement and experience. As a result, researchers develop opportunistic methods to consider the potential of the manufacturing processes. Therefore, we recommend extending dual methods for DfM and Industry 4.0.

Presenting Author: Markus Doellken Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Product Engineering

Presenting Author Biography: Education
2010 - 2014
Mechanical Engineering studies at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Bachelor of Science)
2014 - 2017
Mechanical Engineering studies at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Master of Science)

Academic
2018 - 2023
Research Associate in the research group design methods at IPEK – Institute of Product Engineering at KIT
From 2024
Post-Doc at IPEK at KIT

Authors:

Markus Doellken Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Product Engineering
Julian Peters Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Product Engineering
Sven Matthiesen Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Product Engineering