Process Reengineering of Collaborative Mold Design and Manufacturing – A System Engineering Evaluation Approach

The mold design/manufacturing plays a crucial role in the development of high-volume mold-injected, pressed, and/or formed products. A mold fabrication consists of a set of sub-processes and usually takes several months to complete its design and production. Due to the shortening of product lifecycle, the sequence of process execution has to be reengineered to improve its efficiency. This research focuses on the as-is and the to-be process analyses of the mold design and manufacturing. The current practice of mold industry is discussed using the as-is process model. Then, the new collaborative and integrated mold design and manufacturing practice is described in the to-be process model. The as-is model and the to-be model also consists of three key views and their relationship. Finally, the comparison of the as-is and the to-be models is conducted using a systematic approach. We evaluate their processes in simulated quantitative measures such as cycle time and cost.