Integrated engineering environment for concurrent analysis and evaluation of new product design, processing, and material handling

It is a well documented fact that the manufacturability of a product is greatly influenced by decisions made during the product design stage. These decisions not only affect the machines and transport devices required to process and handle the product but also the cost associated with the processes and the devices. In this paper, we describe a framework and the need for integrating product design decisions with process and material handling decisions to obtain efficient manufacture. The challenges and opportunities associated with such integration are also discussed. Finally, research opportunities to realize such integration are presented. Although several sources of manufacturing inefficiency can be attributed to material handling, there has been little effort made to consider material handling issues during the product and process design stages. This paper will attempt to provide a description of some of the building blocks for such an integrated system.