Chapter 7

Design of Manufacturing Processes

General Concepts:

Design of the process (es) to produce product should be considered the primary activity
over all other activities performed by the manufacturer. Parts that are assembled into
product should be:
o Made economically
o Of good quality
o On time

Shingo states:
o Production is a network of processes and operations
o Process transforms material into product through a series of operations
o Process shows the flow of material in time and space
o Raw material =>semi-processed component =>finished product
o Operations are work performed to accomplish the transformation

Design of manufacturing processes is not restricted to new firms or new products.

Manufacturers are continuously reviewing their operations to increase production at
lower manufacturing costs
o Introduction of new products
o Product improvements
o Model changes

Firms must have adequate organization and procedures to provide for planning of
manufacturing methods.

o Many techniques and procedures are involved:

o Methods engineering
o Plant layout

Product designer and process engineer should collaborate on the design of the part or
product
o To ensure material specifications are met
o To ensure quality specifications are met
o Designed to be produced by the most economical method
Example: - Concurrent engineering
- Design for assembly

Process Design Scope: Generally Process design planning begins with development
of the product specifications and ends with the final plans for the manufacture of the
product. Following steps are typical:
• A careful review of the product design and specifications to make sure that
economical manufacture is feasible
 • Determination of the methods of manufacture that will result in the manufacturing
cost
• Selection or development or procurement of all machines, tools and other
equipment required for the manufacture of the product as per the required quality
and rate of production
• Layout of the production area and auxiliary spaces and installation of the
manufacturing facilities
• Planning for and establishing the necessary control of materials, machines and
human resources to ensure effective utilization of the manufacturing facility for
the economical production of the product

Basic Factors affecting Process Design:

• Volume or quantity of product to be manufactured based on sales forecast
• The required quality of the product
• The equipment that is available or that can be procured for the product
manufacture
Volume: The volume (quantity) to be manufactured must always be considered as the
volume to be produced within a given period. Anticipated volume should be based on
Sales forecasts
o Greater volume produced the greater opportunity to incorporate advanced
methods of manufacture into the design of the manufacturing process.

Number of identical units to be produced vitally affects the selection of manufacturing

methods

o Leads to new equipment, ex. Jigs, fixtures, or dies

o Will lead to increased production capacity

Product explosion and standardization: Assembled products are broken down into
assemblies, subassemblies, and component parts.
o More than one product involved leads to standardization of subassemblies
and component parts
o Standardization of component parts and product explosion are of primary
importance to process engineering

Quality of the product: Quality requirements affect design of manufacturing process.

Higher quality requirements = higher manufacturing costs Process engineering uses the
following documents to stipulate quality.

o Bills of materials
o Parts lists
o Assembly and detail drawings
o Engineering releases
Equipment: The number of machines of a given type or size influence the design of the
process

Types of manufacturing: This is decided based upon the following: volume, quality,
and equipment. This may be continuous or intermittent or mixed type.

Continuous manufacturing is the production of goods on a flow basis at a

predetermined rate.
o Flow method requires products to move consistently
o Approach continuous movement
o Move from operation to operation without controlled storage
o Typically found in food-processing plants and chemical industries

Line balancing must be used when planning the design of a continuous process line.
Line balancing ensures that each operation in continuous manufacturing requires the
same amount of time. Group technology is an approach to manufacturing in which
similar parts are identified and then grouped together to take advantage of their
similarities.
o Similar parts are grouped into part families
o Part families are manufactured in cells
o Manufacturing cells are made up of machine tool groupings
Intermittent manufacture is often referred to as job-lot production.

o Usually one or more lots ahead of each workstation awaiting processing

o Requires larger inventory of goods in process than continuous
manufacturing

Mixed types of manufacturing: Industries often use concepts such as just-in-time to

integrate continuous and intermittent manufacturing

CAD CAM: The term CAD/CAM is a short form of Computer-Aided Design (CAD)
and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM). The term CAD/NC (Numerical
Control) is equivalent in some industries. CAD/CAM software uses CAD drawing
tools to describe geometries used by the CAM portion of the program to define a
tool path that will direct the motion of a machine tool to machine the exact shape
that was drawn.

Well before the development of Computer-aided design, the manufacturing world

adopted tools controlled by numbers and letters to fill the need for manufacturing
complex shapes in an accurate and repeatable manner. During the 1950's these
Numerically-Controlled machines used the existing technology of paper tapes with
regularly spaced holes punched in them (think of the paper roll that makes an old-
fashioned player piano work, but only one inch wide) to feed numbers into
controller machines that were wired to the motors positioning the work on machine
tools.
The electro-mechanical nature of the controllers allowed digital technologies to be
easily incorporated as they were developed. By the late 1960's Numerically-
Controlled machining centers were commercially available, incorporating a variety
of machining processes and automatic tool changing. Such tools were capable of
doing work on multiple surfaces of a workpiece, moving the workpiece to positions
programmed in advance and using a variety of tools - all automatically.

What is more, the same work could be done over and over again with
extraordinary precision and very little additional human input. NC tools
immediately raised automation of manufacturing to a new level once feedback
loops were incorporated (the tool tells the computer where it is, while the computer
tells it where it should be).

What finally made NC technology enormously successful was the development of

the universal NC programming language called APT (Automatically Programmed
Tools). Announced at MIT in 1962, APT allowed programmers to develop
postprocessors specific to each type of NC tool so that the output from the APT
program could be shared among different parties with different manufacturing
capabilities.

The development of Computer-aided design had little effect on CNC initially due to
the different capabilities and file formats used by drawing and machining
programs. However, as CAD applications such as SolidWorks and AutoCad
incorporate CAM intelligence, and as CAM applications such as MasterCam adopt
sophisticated CAD tools, both designers and manufacturers are now enjoying an
increasing variety of capable CAD/CAM software.

Most CAD/CAM software was developed for product development and the design
and manufacturing of components and molds, but they are being used by
architects with greater frequency.

Today, over three-quarters of new machine tools incorporate CNC technologies.

These tools are used in every conceivable manufacturing sector, including many
that affect building technologies.

CNC technology is related to Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM),

Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) and other technologies such as Group
Technology (GT) and Cellular Manufacturing. Flexible Manufacturing Systems
(FMS) and Just-In-Time Production (JIT) are made possible by Numerically-
Controlled Machines.
Process Design Procedures
• The product designer and the process engineer work together during the
design of the part to ensure that all possible manufacturing problems are
taken into consideration as the component part design id developed.
• Determine volume quality and equipment available.
• Make the decision to make or buy.
• If the part is to be made, the next step is to consider all the work that is
required to convert the part from a raw material state to a completely
machined or processed part.
• The work to be done is grouped into operations.
• Arrange the operations into the proper sequence for the most economical
manufacture.

Improvement of product design for manufacture:

Often the product or component parts are designed so that economical manufacture is
not possible, so the part or component parts must be redesigned. In such situations the
process engineer has four possible solutions:
• The part may be purchased from a concern having the proper equipment.
• The necessary equipment may be modified to produce the part.
• Existing equipment may be modified to produce the part.
• The part may be redesigned so that it can be produced on available
equipment.

Most situations the last solution is most feasible. All changes to product design and
specifications must originate from the product-engineering group to ensure that no
change made will materially affect the functional requirements of the product.