Concurrent Engineering Introduction:
Concurrent Engineering is a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and their related processes, including, manufacturing and support. This approach is intended to cause the developers from the very outset to consider all elements of the product life cycle, from conception to disposal, including cost, schedule, quality and user requirements
Case-study:Designing Pressure Vessel
This case study shows how the effect of implementation of the Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) in product development process. The method used for this case study is the Boothroyd and Dewhurst method. Using this method, the existing design of the pressure vessel was modified by incorporating the design for manufacture and assembly requirements. The approach enables a shorter product development cycle time through reduction in manufacturing and assembly time. Apart from that, the overall cost of the pressure vessel was reduced. The implementation of DFA and DFM led to enormous benefits including simplification of products, reduction of assembly and manufacturing cost, improvement of quality and reduction of time to market DFM is a systematic methodology that will reduce the manufacturing cost through reducing the overall parts of the product and redesign the product parts, so the product will be easy to handle and assemble (Boothroyd and Dewhurst, 1991). DFM is a systematic procedure to maximize the use of manufacturing processes in the design of components and DFA is a systematic procedure to maximize the use of components in the design of a product. Methodology: The Design for the pressure vessel is analysed using the hand book of the pressure vessel manufacturer and the information that related to the standard is used to construct the pressure vessel. Then according to the design specification modeling is done using 3D interface software,using which assembly analysis is done. Now the actual Pressure vessel and DFM analysed pressure vessels are compared by comparing the design efficiency and the implementation of design for manufacture and assembly that was proposed by Boothroyd and Dewhurst Method.
Concurrent Project Implementation Implementing concurrent engineering the pressure vessel development time was reduced,by applying the design for manufacture and assembly since designing Stage This implementation will reduce the rework if there are any problem in manufacturing and assembly process. Assembly process can be conducted more easy and efficient
Model without DFMA Element The number of components produced is without considering the guideline of design for manufacture and assembly. The pressure vessel model without design for manufacture and assembly element. There are 33 different components with their respective quantity to produce a complete pressure vessel..
Comparison within Model with and without DFMA Element The number of component to produce a complete pressure vessel with DFMA approach and without DFMA approach is reduce one component with the reduction of the skirt vent number from 3 to 2 component needed. But, a clear difference with the component quantity. For the existing pressure vessel, component quantity is 127, and the new design just has 108 components. From Table 1 the number of reduction is 19 components. The percentage of quantity reduction from the existing design is 14.96%. Even though the reduction of component is small, but it still can give impact on assembly time, material cost and material handling cost The component reduction that can be conducted is very limited. Its because almost all the component in the existing pressure vessel is very critical and if its eliminated, it will affect the functionality of pressure vessel, apart from that, it will overrule the ASME standard. Existing manual assembly efficiency, Ema = 3 x Na / tma x 100% = 3 x 35 / 520393.42 x 100% = 0.020 % For the design assembly efficiency with DFMA elements is;
New manual assembly efficiency, Ema = 3 x Na / tma x 100% = 3 x 35 / 471371.69 x 100% = 0.022 % From the implementation of design for manufacture and assembly to the pressure vessel, we can get the manual assembly design efficiency is improve. Besides that, the reduction of component can reduce the material and component handling, without affecting the functionality of the pressure vessel. Design Changes(Some Examples) The existing design of pressure vessel was modified. The changes is with considering the design for manufacture approach such as easy to machine, less finishing work, reduce rework, and all of that will tend to improve the manufacturability. The chamfer preparation process can make the assembly work of pressure vessel easier before it ready to be welded. Figure 2 shows the changes of existing pressure vessel component with and without chamfer preparation.
The compression ring also can be simplified with the reduction of anchor bolt hole. This canreduce the machining time to produce the hole. Besides that, it can reduce the number of anchor boltthat been using to retain the position of pressure vessel. Figure 3 shows the difference within the compression ring that the design was simplified and the existing design.
The design of base plate and gusset plate also been modified as the compression ring design. The number of anchor bolt holes reduced from 12 to only 6 holes as shown in Figure 4.
Conclusion
The DFMA approach is potential to reduce the cost of pressure vessel development. These costs are development time, handling cost, material cost and labor cost. The implementation of this concurrent engineering element will reduce rework of the component, because the manufacturing process was considered during early of pressure vessel development. The objective to implement DFMA on pressure vessel was achieved.
