Abstract
This paper presents a modified Taguchi methodology to improve the robustness of modular product families against changes in customer requirements. The general research questions posed in this paper are: (1) How to effectively design a product family (PF) that is robust enough to accommodate future customer requirements? (2) How far into the future should the designers look to design a robust product family? An example of a simplified vacuum product family is used to illustrate our methodology. In the example, the customer requirements are selected as signal factors; the future changes of customer requirements are selected as noise factors; an index called the quality characteristic (QC) is set to evaluate the product vacuum family; and the module instance matrix (M) is selected as the control factor. Initially a relation between the objective function (QC) and the control factor (M) is established, and then the search space is systematically explored using the complex method to determine the optimum M and the corresponding QC values. Next, various noise levels at different time points are introduced into the system. For each noise level, the optimal values of M and QC are computed and plotted on a QC-chart. The tunable time period of the control factor (in the example, the module matrix, M) is computed using the QC-chart. The tunable time period represents the maximum time for which a given module matrix can be used to satisfy the current and future customer needs. Finally, a robustness index is used to break up the tunable time period into suitable time periods that the designers should focus on while designing product families.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages | 173-182 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Publication status | Published - 2001 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 6th Design fro Manufacturing Conference - Pittsburgh, PA, United States Duration: 9 Sept 2001 → 12 Sept 2001 |
Conference
Conference | 6th Design fro Manufacturing Conference |
---|---|
Country/Territory | United States |
City | Pittsburgh, PA |
Period | 9/09/01 → 12/09/01 |
Keywords
- Modular product
- Product family
- Robust design