Integrated Design of a Product Family and Its Assembly System

The last two decades of the 20th century have witnessed important shifts in customers' behaviour. Companies now need to integrate customers in their strategies and manufacturers have to propose a large variety of products to meet the market's demand. Increasing the range of PVs attracts and retains customers, yet it dramatically augments the cost and complexity of the manufacturing systems. As many decisions taken at the design stage of the product are decisive for its entire life, it is crucial to integrate the process and the assembly system when designing the product. This text presents an integrated approach for the design of a product family and its assembly system, whose main principles consider the product family as a fictitious unique product for which the assembly system is to be devised. It imposes assembly and operation constraints as late as possible in the design process to get liberties in the system design, and adapts the product family at each design stage to integrate the new constraints related to the successive design choices.