Concurrent Tolerance Design with Alternative Manufacturing Processes

Traditional practice to tolerance design has been based on a sequential approach to design and manufacturing considerations. An integrated approach involving simultaneous selection of design and manufacturing tolerances was introduced in the last decade. Choice of manufacturing processes (or machines) from amongst the alternatives, frequently encountered in different stages of realization of individual dimensions, is an important issue in product development. Optimal tolerance design problem formulated with these two issues is the focus of this study. The resulting optimization problem involving a non-linear and combinatorial search space cannot be effectively solved for global solution using conventional optimization techniques. Genetic algorithm, a non-traditional optimization technique has been proposed in this research. The approach has been demonstrated with the help of a simple case study. 12 refs.