Abstract
Within manufacturing companies, the architectural description of how a product is built is typically well defined while the architecture of the product from a functional view describing how the functional requirements are met in the product is often less articulated. For products composed of many components (modular products) such descriptions are clear, whereas few representation schemes are available that treat highly functionally integrated components, where all the functions are satisfied by one integral, homogenous physical structure. In this paper, an approach to describe the architecture for integrated components in the aerospace industry is described. Different regions of the component, termed as sections, are assumed to satisfy the functions required of the structure which are often manufactured by joining (welding) different segments. By assigning sectional and functional information to different manufactured segments of the structure, graphs are created that link the functional requirements and sections. Two different methods, one based on set compositions and other on creating an enhanced function-means (EF-M) tree are used to link the functions to the sections of the component, resulting in different graphs for different types of manufacturing splits for the same component. Comparison of the methods is then carried out using properties of the graphs produced. The method that utilises set compositions performs well for entire component descriptions while the method that uses an EF-M tree to create a graph describes sections (regions) of the component well so that functional relationships can be better described (integration of already existing design knowledge). The product descriptions created can help designers to identify how alternative manufacturing splits impact the functionally defined product architecture which in turn enables both improved manufacturing and improved design decisions.
Highlights
The success of products is determined by how well they satisfy the needs and expectations of the stakeholders, expressed generally in terms of functional requirements on the products’ behaviour and performance
We describe a way to link the functional requirements with different sections of the component by taking into account various manufacturing options such that the functions to section relations result in a graph
This study was concerned with representing the functional product architecture for an integrated product considering alternative manufacturing options
Summary
The success of products is determined by how well they satisfy the needs and expectations of the stakeholders, expressed generally in terms of functional requirements on the products’ behaviour and performance. The architecture of a product can be represented using design structure matrices (DSMs) (Eppinger and Browning 2012) or node link diagrams (Keller et al 2006) Both represent the interaction among parts in a product. Sections are regions or areas in the integrated product which can be thought of as satisfying a limited number of functions This makes it possible to create a function to section mapping that can be represented as a graph (a node link diagram) which forms the basis of architecture evaluations. Modularity is attributed to an integrated architecture product to better describe how functions are satisfied by different sections of the component With this effort, we highlight two complementary views to look at a product, an engineering design view and a manufacturing view. The load carrying, non-rotating (static) structural components of an aero engine are good examples where both functional and manufacturing integration are common
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