Tufail Habib

Product family modelling for manufacturing planning

To enable product configuration of a product family, it is important to develop a model of the selected product family. From such model, a product configurator, in which customers can specify individual products from the family, can be developed. To further utilise the product family model for planning and executing production, the model should be enriched with additional data. The idea is that, when any individual product is specified using the product configurator, a product model can be extracted with all data, necessary for manufacturing planning. In this paper, issues of creating manufacturing structures and related planning data in product family models are presented. Primarily, the more complicated multi-level manufacturing structures are considered and it is argued that the models need to specify other structures for manufacturing compared with the product structure resulting from configuration. Furthermore, the addition of attributes for planning data is addressed.

Multidisciplinary Product Decomposition and Analysis Based on Design Structure Matrix Modeling

Design structure matrix (DSM) modeling in complex system design supports to define physical and logical configuration of subsystems, components, and their relationships. This modeling includes product decomposition, identification of interfaces, and structure analysis to increase the architectural understanding of the system. Since product architecture has broad implications in relation to product life cycle issues, in this paper, mechatronic product is decomposed into subsystems and components, and then, DSM model is developed to examine the extent of modularity in the system and to manage multiple interactions across subsystems and components. For this purpose, Cambridge advanced modeler (CAM) software tool is used to develop the system matrix. The analysis of the product (printer) architecture includes clustering, partitioning as well as structure analysis of the system. The DSM analysis is helpful to support decisions about product redesign and modularization.

Design models in the development of mechatronic systems: virtual prototyping and mechatronic module development process

Modelling and simulation tools support to reduce the number of physical prototypes in the development of multidomain systems. Virtual prototyping of the multidomain systems is one of the essential steps to decrease the time of the product development. In mechatronic systems, mechanical, electrical and software domains cannot be developed independently from each other at the beginning of the earliest design phases. Integrated, virtual and mathematical models are developed as they are less time consuming and are less expensive than physical prototypes. This paper explores design process of mechatronic product development with the aid of models. V-model is used as a basic approach in the design process. Virtual model of an electromechanical system is developed by using Bond graph method and the response of the system is simulated in a software tool 20-sim. This development process is summarised in a model from design integration to simulation of the system. Furthermore, the overall design process of the system is illustrated in a model that is based on mechatronic module development. That includes mainly the allocation of requirements to individual domains and illustrating the steps in the design process.