Development of model-based methodologies for product-assembly co-design

This PhD aims to bridge the gap between product design and assembly system design by incorporating assembly knowledge into the early stages of the product development. The current industrial context requires companies to aim at a first-time-right, “down to lot size 1 at the cost of volume production” strategy. Hence, considering assembly aspects too late or in a trial-and-error way is no longer an option. Therefore, there is a need for methods and software tools enabling assessment of assembly complexity in an early design stage, allowing co-optimization of product performance with ease-of-assembly in a quantitative way, and allowing trade-off analysis of various solutions. Model-based methodologies for product-assembly co-design in the early product design are developed, such that both the product and the assembly-process of the product can be designed at the same time. In building up the framework to do so, the focus is on optimizing the design of mechatronic systems to certain performance attributes (dynamics among others) under constraints set by the assembly system.