MANUFACTURING COST ESTIMATION DURING EARLY PHASES OF MACHINE DESIGN

DS 68-5: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 11), Impacting Society through Engineering Design, Vol. 5: Design for X / Design to X, Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark, 15.-19.08.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Malmqvist, J.
Author: Germani, Michele; Cicconi, Paolo; Mandolini, Marco
Series: ICED
Section: Design for X, Design to X
Page(s): 198-209

Abstract

Machine design process requires the effective and rapid assessment of different design solutions. Beyond functions and technical performance other parameters as safety, manufacturability, assemblability etc. have to be taken into account. Manufacturing cost is one of the main factors in order to choose the most suitable solution, so accurate estimation in the early design phases is fundamental. Design to cost implies to manage a vast amount of manufacturing knowledge that has to be linked to the design parameters. Feature based 3D CAD models contain data useful for cost estimation but, despite the numerous researches on features recognition and extraction, no cost estimation software system yet assures reliable results. In such context, this paper presents an approach for rapid manufacturing cost estimation where design features are automatically linked to manufacturing operations. The approach has been implemented into a knowledge-based system and tested on practical case studies in order to validate the performance.

Keywords: MANUFACTURING FEATURES; KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM; FEATURE-BASED COSTING; DESIGN TO COST

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