Different aspects in design and development of flexible fixtures: review and future directions

Widely used in manufacturing, fixtures have a direct impact upon product manufacturing quality, productivity and cost. The cost of designing and fabricating fixtures can amount to 10 ± 20% of the total manufacturing system cost. To reduce manufacturing costs, a flexible fixture system should be designed to be competent in fixturing as many workpieces as possible. This paper carries out a literature review of different aspects in design and development of flexible fixture. This review considers introduction and literature review with significant researches and requirements of fixtures over time, steps of fixture design along with their classification review has been presented to give a deep and quick understanding of fixture design and its criteria. Important and relevant research carried out in the field of CAFD using intelligent approaches that have been utilised in automation has been reviewed. The shortcomings of the existing research studies are stated and future directions are proposed.