DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURE AT THE FUNCTION LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION: A CONCEPTUAL EXPOSITION

How can Design For Manufacture (DFM) be implemented when the functional requirements for a product being designed are known but the information defining its physical form is vague and incomplete? Decisions should be made as quickly as possible as to whether the product is manufacturable, and if so, what manufacturing alternatives should be pursued. Our answer is the development of an approach to DFM from a decision-based perspective and utilizing design using available assets. With this approach we apply Boothroyd and Dewhurst's process and material selection to the early stages of design. In this paper we present this approach and describe two key elements: 1) how products are modeled at the function level of abstraction, and 2) how the manufacturability of such representations can be determined, both using a simplified example. Because our example illustrates just a few portions of our approach to DFM, the focus remains on our method rather than on the results per se.