Technology and Manufacturing Process Selection

Flexibility is valuable when the future market and customer needs are uncertain, especially if the product development process is long. This chapter focuses on what the firm can do to increase their flexibility before a product is produced and sold. The flexibility is built into the product architecture, which then enables the firm to take a staged decision process. Flexibility-in-the-Project approach was developed by de Neufville and Sholtes (2011), and has been successfully applied to large infrastructure projects. Real options analysis has only been utilized in high-level product planning decisions. The case study described in this chapter is the first successful application of the Flexibility-in-the-Project framework, providing real-time engineering design decision support to Ford Motor Company engineering efforts in future vehicle electrification. In hybrid and electric vehicle applications, the high voltage battery pack hardware and control system architecture will experience multiple engineering development cycles in the next 20 years. Flexibility in design could mitigate risk due to uncertainty in both engineering and consumer preferences. Core engineering team decisions on battery pack voltage monitoring, thermal control, and support software systems will iterate as technology evolves. The research team valued key items within the technology subsystems and developed flexible strategies to allow Ford to capture upside potential while protecting against downside risk, with little-to-no extra cost at this early stage of development. The methodology used to evaluate the uncertainty, identify flexibility, and provide the real options value of flexibility is presented.

Based on an increasing need of life cycle perspectives in product and production development, there is a call for more effective working methods for the reconfiguration, rearrangement, retro-fit and reuse of current equipment, systems and processes within production systems. This chapter discusses the need and character of such methods based on current research and industrial practice in production system design and development. A concluded development process is illustrated by a double helix development cycle for the production system and the product. The traditional life cycle illustration of product and production system design is in this case altered to a double helix where the same design phases of requirement analysis, alternative synthesis and alternative analysis reoccur for each project phase of conceptual design, detailed design, validation and industrialization/running-in, but for each development cycle on an elaborated level.

This chapter presents the Six Sigma Life Cycle approach, a framework that comprises two interlinked models: the Six Sigma Project Life Cycle model and the Technical System Life Cycle model. The Six Sigma Project LC model consists of a detailed and comprehensive process intended to guide managers and team leaders along all the relevant stages of a Six Sigma project, from identification to post-project, helping them to achieve the project’s goals with minimum expenditure of effort and resources. The Technical System LC model aims to assist them towards the best decision of which Six Sigma methodology, roadmap and toolbox should be used, depending on the degree and type of innovation that are involved in the project scope. Two case studies are described to demonstrate the practical application and usefulness of the framework.

Life cycle cost of manufactured parts and the selection of the manufacturing equipment to produce the parts are of the utmost importance in today’s highly competitive automotive industry. In the context of materials substitution for high volume production, a problem is often encountered on how to accurately predict the cost of manufactured parts. First order cost factors, like the cost of the raw material itself, are normally easily available, but second order factors, like tools and dies cost, amount of scrap, rework and others, are quite difficult to predict to support the substitution decision. Nevertheless, they play a major role in defining the overall life cycle cost. It becomes even harder when the new proposed material is similar to the incumbent material. In these cases, a predictive cost model will have to be sensitive to changes in the material properties to be able to correctly estimate these second order costs. The problem is that material properties are seldom directly related to manufacturing cost parameters in sufficient detail. Very often, relying on empirical models calibrated with historical data represents the only available alternative. This chapter presents discussion around these issues and follows four industrial examples where a methodology is proposed for predicting cost in the presence of alternative materials with the same manufacturing process, using empirical engineering models together with process-based cost models. The relevant manufacturing cost factors are identified and discussed, and conclusions are drawn. A generalization of the methodology is also discussed, enabling further work in different industrial situations.

Aircraft production is a complex and lengthy process which involves a judicious selection of materials in combination with the option of various production processes. The objective of this chapter is twofold: the first part encompasses the evolution of aircraft materials and related techniques, underlying their impact in the complete life cycle of an aircraft; the second part describes the industrialization process to allow manufacturing of airplanes. It essentially deals with the specific process where engineering is involved namely in terms of the various steps that need to be taken to generate the information essential for the process. It includes also the connection to specific ERP modules such as MRP II and CRP which are essential to the management of aircraft production.

This chapter describes a methodology to gather, assess and interpret the ecological impact of technology chains within industrial manufacturing. The explained methodology leads to significant information about high consuming processes and important energy and material flows. Industrial companies cannot allocate the exact consumptions in the manufacturing processes. Especially costs and consumptions for media like compressed air or centrally provided lubricants are mostly distributed by means of the number of machines rather than by actual consumption figures. By utilising the presented methodology not only information about real consumptions, but furthermore ecological data can be generated for various purposes such as ecological product declarations and evaluation of alternative production chains. The methodology is exemplarily applied in two industrial case studies and results of these studies are shown in this chapter.

Manufacturing process chains describe the concept of how the transformation of a raw material into a finished product is achieved. Within the planning phase of the process chains not only technical and economic requirements must be met but also ecological aspects need to be considered, e.g. the energy consumption during the production phase. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate how the energy consumption of process chains can be considered in the early stage of the planning phase. It provides an overview of the methods that are available to describe and predict the energy demand of consumers in process chains. The presented method is based on planning data like characteristic power consumption parameters of manufacturing equipment and related time parameters. It aims at predicting the energy consumption per product. The data is needed for predictive assessment of alternative process chains and to assess the impact of energy consumption during the production phase in life cycle considerations. Finally, this chapter presents an example for the energy-aware design and selection of a preferred process chain from several alternatives. By this it is illustrated how the presented heuristic approach can be applied.

The aim of this paper is to highlight energy intensive process steps in compound feed production and their importance for the overall LCA in feed processing. The carbon footprint has become a relevant measure among the animal and feed experts for comparing product or process performances. Our research focuses on the energy intensive process steps in the feed production line. Due to the fact that there is a high pressure on feed and food quality, there are very limited possibilities to change the process since a certain energy input is needed to reach the requested quality. The solution can be provided through an intelligent network process control. The network needs access to automatic sensor control devices that are installed inline to measure varying product parameters like the changing water content in grains for example (due to rainy or dry seasons). The knowledge of certain product parameters will influence the process control like for example steam addition to the process. An intelligent network supports the best energy performance for producing the requested compound feed quality by the customer. The paper summarizes the information along the compound feed production that is necessary for an energy efficient process control and explains how an intelligent network can contribute to the latter.

In order to capture long-term effects of technology decisions regarding technical, economic or ecological targets of a company and its supply chain partners, life cycle-oriented evaluation of product and process technologies is necessary. For enabling a systematic evaluation, methodological support is needed. Thus, this chapter presents a framework for life cycle-oriented evaluation of product and process technologies consisting of three pillars: generic product, life cycle and process models, a decision theory-based procedure model allowing a structured and integrated evaluation, and a method and tool set. The framework will be illustrated by a case study of life cycle-oriented evaluation of alternative technologies for manufacturing mountain bike-frame components.

Nowadays, the performance of products and processes along the life cycle is a competitive issue for the industrial development as well as a permanent challenge for researchers. This paper proposes a comprehensive life cycle framework to support the selection of sustainable technology and manufacturing processes. Considering both cost and environmental dimensions, process-based models are used to feed data and structure information to assess the life cycle cost and environmental performance of alternative technological processes. This approach is extremely useful when dealing with decision making processes inherent to products development and to the selection of materials and/or technologies in early design stages. In parallel, a technical evaluation of candidate alternatives is also proposed. Based on cost, environmental and technical dimensions, two integrating analyses are proposed to support informed decisions by mapping the best alternatives. This framework is applied to a case study regarding alternative mould designs to produce a part through injection moulding.

This chapter highlights the complementarities of cost and environmental evaluation in a sustainable approach. Starting with the needs and limits for whole product lifecycle evaluation, this chapter begins with the modeling, data capture and performance indicator aspects. Next, the information issue, regarding the whole lifecycle of the product, is addressed. In order to go further than economical evaluation/assessment, the value concept (for a product or a service) is discussed. Value can combine functional requirements, cost objectives and environmental impact. Finally, knowledge issues are discussed, addressing the complexity of integrating multi-disciplinary expertise into the whole lifecycle of a product.

In the Product Development (PD) of complex mechanical and electromechanical systems, such as machine-tools, mapping the relationships between technical behavior, environmental and cost impacts brings new challenges. Having technological advances, cost drivers and environmental performance under surveillance, manufacturers and designers are expected to provide eco-efficient systems keeping a competitive price. This introduces a new set of design functions with increased complexity due to the new interdependent variables, requiring complementary technical, environmental and cost assessments. The redesign study of a sheet metal forming machine-tool, a press brake, is here used by the authors to present the first assessment of a proper methodology to support the main decision processes and to illustrate the technical and technological trade-offs faced by a PD team in order to achieve the global design objectives. The design process aimed to reduce the environmental footprint of the machine-tool and simultaneously to improve the bending process accuracy. A Voice of Customer (VOC) study was carried out in order to assess the receptiveness of press-brake users to the targeted product specifications and price changes sensitivity. The research effort was mainly focused in defining and testing the applicability of different assessment and measurement tools for the Ecodesign of a press-brake.

In industry, the use of composites, and more specially carbon fiber/thermoset matrix ones, is ever increasing. However, end-of-life solutions for these materials are still under development. In this chapter, a solution linking design strategies with a recycling process based on the solvolysis of the matrix by water under supercritical conditions is proposed. The needs and multi-disciplinary skills required for (i) taking recycling possibilities into account from the early stages of the product design, and (ii) the necessity to standardize its recycling capabilities with design requirements, will both be discussed. The present chapter highlights the need for designers to take a functional approach into consideration, including material characterization, limits of the recycling process, constraints and opportunities. The first lessons learned from experiments using this technique will be shown.

In modern society there has been an increase in consumption and discard of goods and products due to the high growth of the world population. Moreover, in the manufacturing field rapid technology cycles quickly render products obsolete and as a consequence consumers dispose of products more intensively. Product disassembly is becoming an important phase of the product lifecycle to consider from the environmental and economic point of view. It occurs to minimize the maintenance time and describe the End-of-Life (EoL) strategies, for example component reuse/recycling. These EoL closed-loop scenarios should be considered during the early phases of design process when decisions influence product architecture and in the product structure. In this context, the purpose of this chapter is to describe an approach to support the designer’s evaluation of disassemblability by using the 3D CAD model structure and suitable key indices related to product features and environmental costs. A software system allows the product model to be analyzed and evaluates the product disassemblability degree. Experimental case studies facilitate the approach demonstration and highlights product environmental performance due to the application of the proposed approach.