THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS FOR DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF THERMOPLASTIC PARTS

The functionality and manufacturability of a given product is largely determined by constraints imposed by the end user and manufacturer. With conflicting constraints, the designer may be unable to satisfy the complete set and has to find the best trade off to optimize the design. In order to find this point with the minimum quality loss, extensive knowledge of the design space is essential but seldom readily available. The design space can be investigated using various Design of Experiments techniques, such as a Taguchi L128 experimental design with augmented levels [1]. The actual loss of performance or cost can be calculated using a loss function for each constraint and then combined in order to find the total quality loss and subsequently the optimal point in the design space. Application of the developed theory will then be demonstrated