The product cycle

• The product cycle is composed of two main processes:

1. The design process and 2. The manufacturing process.

• 1. The design process: can be classified into two types of sub

processes:
i) synthesis and ii) analysis.

• Identification of the design need, design specifications, feasibility study

with collecting relevant design information, and design
conceptualization are part of the synthesis sub process.

• The outcome of the synthesis sub process is a conceptual design of the

prospective product in the form of a sketch or layout drawing that
shows the relationships among the various product components. This
is done in the CAD systems
• The analysis sub process begins with analysis and optimization of the
design.

• Typical analysis include stress analysis to verify the strength of the design,
interference checking to detect collision between components while they
are moving in an assembly, and kinematic analysis to check whether the
machine to be used will provide the required motions.

• These analysis software packages are classified as CAE. Various

algorithms for optimization procedures have been developed as part of
the CAD system for finding the optimal design solution.

• When the outcome of the design evaluation is satisfactory, the design

documentation is prepared. This includes the preparation of drawings,
analysis reports, and bill of materials. All these are done using computer-
aided drafting tools with systematic file-handling capability.
The Product cycle
• 2. The manufacturing process begins with process planning.

• Process planning is a function that establishes which

processes to be used, the required process parameters and
machine selection for the dedicated processes. The outcome
of process planning is a production plan, a material order and
machine programming.

• All the computer technologies for these activities can be

classified as CAM. For example, computer-aided process
planning (CAPP) software to aid the process planning,
computer-aided numerical control (NC) part programming
software package to generate cutting tool paths and NC
codes, computer-aided tool design (CATD) to design and
fabricate jigs and fixtures, etc.
• Once the process planning has been completed, the actual
product is produced and inspected against quality requirements.
Parts that pass the quality control inspection are assembled,
functionally tested, packaged, labeled and shipped to customers.
These activities are facilitated by computer-aided scheduling to
schedule the production sequences and tasks, and computer-
aided material requirement planning (MRP) to manage the
materials needed for fabrication and assembly.