Colloquia

Samenvatting

Within VMI, many opinions and rumors are going around about the designs of the machines and the consequences of them on the assembly process. However, the designs are never objectively assessed on their assemblability. Therefore, the goal of this research is to create an assessment model for the product designs of VMI to assess them on their assemblability. The literature study states multiple type of requirements within DfA models (Design for Assembly), which if the product design met these requirements it will improve the assembly process. Some of these requirements were already considered within the product designs of VMI. However, not every requirement was considered and, therefore, space for improvement was spotted. After comparing the type of requirements found in the literature with the type of requirements that are already considered within VMI, it can be concluded that on several modularization principles, the product designs are not assessed. Therefore, an assessment model is created on six modularization principles: Design Efficiency, Assembly Complexity, Standard Interfacing, Testing, Space Reservation and Variant -> Composition. For each modularization principle a grade from 0 to 10 is calculated to objectively assess the product design on modularization. According to the results of these assessments, only insufficient grades were given on the Design Efficiency, Standard Interface, Testing and Variants -> Compositions. A redesign is proposed for the tracks of the Maxx Machine to improve the Standard Interface and Design Efficiency modularization principles, because these principles scored the lowest. Afterwards, a validation is done with production experts and engineers to validate the feasibility of the redesign as well as the expected positive effects on assembly. From these results one can conclude that the feasibility of the application of the redesign within engineering should be possible. Hence, about the positive effects on assembly the opinions on the redesign are quiet divided. This was mainly caused by some preconditions on the product design which were not taken into account during as well the redesign as the assessment model itself. Therefore, the assessment model is adjusted according to these preconditions and finally the assessment model itself is validated. From this validation one can conclude that the assessment model can possibly help in improving VMI's product designs for the assembly process as well as that the implementation of the assessment model within the product development process is possibly feasible.