Design for agile assembly: An operational perspective

The concept of agile manufacturing is driven by the need to quickly respond to the changing customer requirements. Agile manufacturing demands a manufacturing system to be able to produce efficiently a large variety of products and be reconfigurable to accommodate changes in the product mix and product designs. The manufacturing system reconfigurability and product variety are critical in agile manufacturing. The concept of agility has an impact on design of assemblies. To implement agile manufacturing, methodologies of design for agile manufacturing are needed. Design for agile assembly is accomplished by considering operational issues of assembly systems at the early product design stage. In this paper, three rules applicable to the design of products for agile assembly from an operational perspective are proposed. These rules are intended to support the design of products to meet the requirements of agile manufacturing. Illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate the potential of the design rules. Procedures and algorithms for implementing these rules are presented.