Minimising assembly loss for a complex assembly using Taguchi's concept in selective assembly

The component tolerance and assembly variation determines the quality of any product. For producing high precision product it requires high accuracy operations both in machining and assembly. Advanced machining process can be used to produce high precision product but it will increase the manufacturing cost as well as cost of the product. In such cases, selective assembly provides an effective way for producing high precision product from relatively low precision components. According to Taguchi's concept, manufacturing a product within the specification may not be sufficient and it must be manufactured to the target dimension. In this article, artificial immune system (AIS) algorithm is developed to obtain the best combination of selective group with minimum clearance variation and least assembly loss value within the specification range. The concept of Taguchi's loss function is applied into the selective assembly method to evaluate the deviation from the mean.