Assembly features in collaborative product development
Integrating assembly into product information to enhance stakeholder communication
Time: Fri 2025-03-28 09.00
Location: Q2, Malvinas väg 10, Stockholm
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/61223482045
Language: English
Subject area: Production Engineering
Doctoral student: Sylvia Nathaly Rea Minango , Industriella produktionssystem
Opponent: Professor Johan Stahre, Chalmers tekniska högskola
Supervisor: Universitets lektor Antonio Maffei, Industriella produktionssystem; Dr Mikael Hedlind,
Abstract
Digital product development that combines diverse expertise can strengthen the ability to create products that meet customer demands in a commercially viable way. In the early stages of this process, user requirements are translated into technical specifications that define a feasible product concept. Therefore, concept detailing in these stages is essential for manufacturing, as they impact process selection and resources required to manufacture the product.
Given the high proportion of assembled products, assembly becomes an important manufacturing process to study, especially in terms of deriving and propagating product characteristics relevant to this process throughout product development.
One major research gap is the lack of a unified way to represent and distinguish product characteristics defined during design to facilitate assembly, which later serve as essential information for this process.
Multiple research efforts have addressed this issue by proposing various specialized information models for assembly, yet a suitable way to represent this information integrated with the product model is still missing.
This thesis addresses this issue focusing on handling activities for automated assembly by providing a threefold contribution: identifying a core concept to represent assembly information, proposing a way to incorporate assembly information within the product information model by leveraging an international standard, and gathering industry experts' insights to improve this approach for broad and quick adoption.
The outcome of this thesis facilitates the integration of stakeholder information early in product development while providing a space to capture design intent. It also streamlines the identification and subsequent extraction of product information that is decisive in designing dedicated specialized equipment, such as feeders, grippers, and fixtures. Thus, this thesis enables enhancement of communication between design and manufacturing and simultaneously bridges the product and resource life cycles.