Advanced process planning in lean product and process development

Abstract

Lean product and process development (Lean PPD) is an emerging paradigm wherein lean thinking is considered in the design and development of engineering products. Although lean design and lean product development have received attention in previous works, process development has received little; research in this area is necessary to improve the concurrency of product and process development. Integration of manufacturing knowledge at the conceptual design stage is of paramount importance to increase the designers awareness of manufacturing capabilities and opportunities. As a result, design rework can also be minimized and possible manufacturing plans can be effectively explored. This challenge leads to the first questions that we intend to address: How can designers be made aware of manufacturing capabilities and constraints? Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) has been pronounced in literature as one of the main enablers for Lean PPD. However, there is no formal methodology to integrate manufacturing planning activities in SBCE. This led to a second research question: how can a set-based approach be applied to process development in the concept development stage? The idea of incorporating lean manufacturing principles has been addressed in previous research, however, there has not been in terms of methodological contribution. Researchers have mentioned that although it is important to reduce waste by improving the manufacturing process, there is some waste that is designed in, and needs to be prevented in the actual design. This gap led to a third research question: How can design options be evaluated to ensure that waste is prevented and lean manufacture is supported by designers? This paper proposes a systematic methodology to communicate manufacturing capabilities and constraints to designers and also support a set-based approach to manufacturing planning activities. A methodology to evaluate design options against lean manufacturing criteria is also presented. Opportunities to apply the research described in this paper are curently being explored in order to evaluate the research through case-based research.