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The product design that is best for function, for manufacturing, for assembling and for servicing results in the best product. Such a design is an ideal so difficult to achieve that it has to be tackled in stages, which ultimately have to be successfully integrated. The stages of Design for Manufacture (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) combine towards that integration in the form of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA). Some broad guidelines for DFMA are given in Table I.

The cause of construction problems is suggested as being the lack of industry cohesion. This can only be addressed successfully by design professionals and construction professionals working more closely together, i.e. considering buildability. Buildability is a problem of managing the transfer of appropriate knowledge about the construction process to the design process worker. It is not solely about the technicalities of the construction process. It is suggested that no buildability strategy which seeks to impose predetermined construction solutions will be readily accepted by design professionals. The development of a design buildability strategy which transfers construction process knowledge in such a manner as to be seen as an adviser on simplification, would not be seen by design professionals as a convergent approach to buildability. Such a strategy would represent just one of a range of strategies to achieving overall project buildability.

Examines the benefits of following an implementation plan when designing and building an assembly machine in‐house, to control the progress of a project. Uses the example of a real life project undertaken at Brunel University [to design and build a chain assembling machine] describing the various steps followed during the design and building process through to testing and control systems. Concludes that although an implementation plan often requires some thought and effort at the beginning of a project it proves worthwhile by the end.

Examines how Mars Electronics International Ltd of Wokingham, expanded into transaction electronics [the handling of money] investing heavily in equipment for the automatic assembly of printed circuit boards and subsequently investigating ways of minimizing work in progress and lead time, with the eventual aim of producing single boards with zero change‐over time and no loss of efficiency. Discusses how MEI have progressed from bench assembly to fully automated robotics assembly via an interim flexible guided manual assembly line for small batch production. Concludes that with its wide range of assembly automation experience, MEI has learnt the importance of flexibility in a system and predicts that in the future attention will focus on “machines built around people” with concern for access, servicing and the environment.

The improvement of the quality of design and the reduction of failure related cost is seen as a crucial competitive requirement for UK manufacturing industry. To achieve these goals, industry must adopt current methods in support of design for quality (DFQ) for analysing potential problems and predicting quality, and integrate these effectively with the appropriate stages of their new product development process. The utilisation and success rate of these techniques in UK companies is, however, relatively low compared to those in countries such as the USA and Japan. In this paper, the fundamental concepts and key areas of opportunity in design improvement using the main DFQ support techniques are reviewed and a framework for their application and integration is presented to support concurrent product development. The typical experiences and problems concerning the application and implementation of techniques are discussed and areas where new research should be directed are touched on so that DFQ techniques may better enhance industrial practice in the achievement of high quality products.

This paper aims to present a method for predicting dimensional variation in assembly processes of a wingbox structure concentrating on the assembly of skin panels to rib feet.

Finite element modelling and experimental tests are conducted on the rib structure based on the site measurement gathered from the Airbus assembly factory.

The results have shown that the simulated model has the capability of predicting to an acceptable degree of accuracy the overall geometrical variations of the ribs and skin panels, as well as the positional variations of each individual rib foot.

The authors believe that no previous research has offered a similar prediction method for large aerostructures.

This paper aims to explore how the emerging cold spray technology could be integrated within a framework that finally could lead to more efficient aerospace operations.

The paper builds research question and hypotheses and answers them using support from authorities, evidence or logic.

The emerging cold spray process should not be viewed in isolation, but viewed as a component of a broad framework that should include materials, technologies, market, infrastructure and strategies.

This paper highlights that, for more efficient cold spray aerospace applications, there is a need for an interdisciplinary approach that crosses traditional disciplines, schools of thought and professions.

A discouraging problem regarding the use of robots within production processes is the perception by designers of single, unique products (such as buildings) that a manufacturing approach, reliant upon high levels of standardisation, constrains design creativity. An alternative approach, based upon the production philosophy of true simplification, is proposed. This suggests that robots be provided with an ability to reason founded in Task Path modelling theory, enabling them to autonomously carry out task planning within the context of the production problem, and path planning within the production environment. These actions are combined as the basis of task path theory. Task path theory does not infer that robots attempt to emulate human operatives in their physical actions with regard to the production process.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a step‐by‐step implementation framework for lean product development (LPD), from the marketing research on product development process, product design to the launch of final production.

The research approach taken in this paper is built around the primary industry cases, practical approaches and partial solutions available within the existing literature.

The most recent improvement of LPD, from the authors' perspective, focuses on tools and implementation for LPD. In this paper, a detailed step‐by‐step implementation is given after the framework is introduced. Led by value and waste analysis in product development, different tools and techniques which can be used to eliminate wastes were discussed briefly, and then the implementation from Doing the Right Thing to Doing the Right Thing for company transition to lean were proposed elaborately.

Due to time and economic environment limitations, the authors have not covered and implemented this approach in all existing different environments to ensure that it is robust.

The approach described here seeks to overcome other frameworks' weaknesses in terms of the realistic aspect and feasibility, and combines more existing best practice from industry, consultancy and academia into a step‐by‐step framework for the achievement of effective LPD.

This paper aims to present a design methodology to enable product design for ease of assembly. It is corroborated by means of a case study. The methodology is based on standard time data. This enables quick computation of assembly time as well as comparing different design options for ease of assembly.

Component design that is easy to assemble is likely to take less time and vice versa. Assembly time is a function of product design attributes such as geometric shape, weight, center of gravity, type of material, number of fasteners and types of fasteners. The methodology uses standard data to achieve its objective. Numeric scores are developed for each design feature based on the aforementioned design attributes. This enables not only computation of assembly time for a brand new product but also comparison of two or more alternative design configurations from the point of view of ease of assembly.

The value of the system is corroborated by means of case studies of actual product designs. It is demonstrated that changing any of the underlying design attributes (such as type of fastener used, number of fasteners used, material of the component and component shape) is likely to result in changing the amount of time taken to assemble the product. The scoring system facilitates the quick computation of assembly time

The amount of time to assemble a product before the product is ever designed is facilitated by this system. Assembly time is a direct function of product design attributes. Process time is calculated using standard data, specifically, the Methods Time Measurement (MTM) system. This is accomplished by converting design features into time measurement units (TMUs). Assembly cost can then be easily computed by using assembly time as the basis. The computation of assembly time and cost is important inasmuch as its role in influencing productivity. This is of obvious value not only to the designer but the company as a whole.