Minimization of total manufacturing cost for simple and complex assemblies

Abstract

Customer satisfaction with respect to engineering products highly depends on functional quality of the product. The objective of any manufacturing organization is to satisfy its customers by providing quality products at competitive price. Eventually, the organizations lookout for optimizing the manufacturing cost without forgoing quality. A product or assembly consists of number of subcomponents and designed to do specific function. The manufacturers intend to supply high quality products at lowest price. The performance of the product depends on the quality of the sub assemblies and sub components. In turn, the quality is primarily based on tolerance of subcomponents. Tolerances of assemblies are having a strong relationship with its manufacturing cost and selection of optimum tolerance plays a major role in reducing the manufacturing cost significantly. The present study enumerates the systematic procedure for minimization of total cost of manufacturing in the environment of any assemblies consisting number of components. The assemblies broadly classified as Simple Assembly (SA) and Complex Assembly (CA) based on its complexity. The assemblies such as Support Wheel Assembly (SWA), Shaft and Housing Assembly (SHA), Knuckle Joint Assembly (KJA), Wheel Mounting Assembly (WMA) and Improved KJA (IKJA) are considered for numerical illustration to describe the proposed minimization process. In the present work, the task of minimizing total manufacturing cost of assembly (TCasy) is carried out. The cost tolerance relationship is used for evaluating the cost of manufacturing correspond to tolerance and machining process. The selection of alternate manufacturing processes and nominal dimensions are selected without affecting the critical dimensions of the assembly during cost minimization process. The minimization of TCasy is carried out using Lagrange Multiplier (LM) method, Genetic Algorithm (GA), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm and Teacher Learner Based Optimization (TLBO) algorithm for SA and CA. newline