Mitigating Risk of Producibility Failures in Platform Concept Development

Late detection of producibility problems once a product is in production implies several risks. In aerospace applications, high manufacturing variation rates on a product can imply design modifications with subsequent increase of lead time and detriment of product performance, decreasing customer satisfaction. In the context of platform development, in which a wide range of customer needs are met by designing a variety of product variants, these risks can multiply to an unmanageable sum. To mitigate the risk of late modifications of a variety of designs, producibility aspects needs to become an imperative part of the early platform development stages. This paper presents a two- stage producibility assessment method employed to systematically narrow down a set of product- manufacturing variants based on information generated using various types of rule-based and simulation-based models. The assessments are used to mitigate the risk of producibility failures, classified in this study as operational failures and quality failures. The two-stage producibility assessment method is demonstrated in an aerospace case wherein a variety of aero engine sub-systems and welding resources are modeled and assessed. The results show that the risk of producibility failures can be mitigated by means of rapid and precise assessments during platform concept development. By mitigating these risks early on, the negative effects on manufacturing variation and lead time may be reduced