INTEGRATION OF DFMA THROUGHOUT AN ACADEMIC PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS SUPPORTED BY A PLM STRATEGY

Quantitative Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) approaches are often applied during the last stages of the Product Design and Development Process (PDDP) as a unique activity, but it would be integrated more efficiently working from the first stages throughout the whole process according to the Concurrent Engineering philosophy. It is proposed a holistic PDDP where the activities and tools of DFMA Methodologies are integrated through its different stages in a single and distributed way, in order to obtain an integral implementation of DFMA in a ``Product Lifecycle Management -PLM'' strategy further along. This attempt is oriented to the implementation of a holistic PLM strategy in a standardized academic PDDP in the B.Eng. in Product Design Engineering at EAFIT University-Colombia. Besides, it is an initial proposal to integrate DFX methodologies in PLM, seeing that previous experiences have demonstrated that, at academic level, in projects where the application of all taught courses should be evident in the final designed products, students forget to apply considerations related to manufacturing and assembly issues