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Near optimal design of fixture layouts in multi-station assembly processes

This dissertation presents a methodology for the near optimal design of fixture layouts in multi-station assembly processes. An optimal fixture layout improves the robustness of a fixture system, reduces product variability and leads to manufacturing cost reduction. Three key aspects of the multi-station fixture layout design are addressed: a multi-station variation propagation model, a quantitative measure of fixture design, and an effective and efficient optimization algorithm. Multi-station design may have high dimensions of design space, which can contain a lot of local optima. In this dissertation, I investigated two algorithms for optimal fixture layout designs. The first algorithm is an exchange algorithm, which was originally developed in the research of optimal experimental designs. I revised the exchange routine so that it can remarkably reduce the computing time without sacrificing the optimal values. The second algorithm uses data-mining methods such as clustering and classification. It appears that the data-mining method can find valuable design selection rules that can in turn help to locate the optimal design efficiently. Compared with other non-linear optimization algorithms such as the simplex search method, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, the data-mining method performs the best and the revised exchange algorithm performs comparably to simulated annealing, but better than the others. A four-station assembly process for a sport utility vehicle (SUV) side frame is used throughout the dissertation to illustrate the relevant concepts and the resulting methodology.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/1076
Date15 November 2004
CreatorsKim, Pansoo
ContributorsDing, Yu
PublisherTexas A&M University
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Dissertation, text
Format892365 bytes, 140040 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, text/plain, born digital

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