Session: DAC-16-01-Platform Architecture and Product Family Design

Paper Number: 90899

90899 - Two-Dimensional Lineup Design of Intermediate Functional Products With Enumerative Optimization of Combinatorial Mini-Max Optimality 

As mechanical products have become further complicated and diversified, integrative design of intermediate functional products, which are used as their components, such as motors, fans, and pumps, through commonalization has become essential for shorter lead time and more cost-saving behind the mainstream. This paper proposes a lineup design method for those intermediate functional products. Scale and coefficient identify their performance. Thus, they are arranged over a two-dimensional space of design requirements to minimize the lead time and production cost with maintaining performance optimality. The former cannot be measured quantitatively before actual production. Thus, minimizing the process complexity is demanded. The latter criterion translates into optimizing the worst-case performance across the requirement space. Those understanding leads to a design method by enumerating possible commonalization patterns, exclusively arranging the lineup of products for each pattern optimally under the viewpoint of performance, and then investigating the best lineup through trade-off analysis against the process complexity. While the lineup arrangement under a pattern is formulated as a mini-max type, its optimization is performed based on monotonicity analysis efficiently. This paper presents the formulation and procedures and then applies the method to a lineup design problem of universal motors to demonstrate its validity and effectiveness.

Presenting Author: Kikuo Fujita Osaka University

Presenting Author Biography: He is a professor of mechanical engineering at Osaka University, Japan.

Authors:

Kikuo Fujita Osaka University
Naoki Ono Osaka University
Yutaka Nomaguchi Osaka University