Enhancement of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly Guidelines for Effective Application in Aerospace Part and Process Design 2020-01-6001

An aircraft’s detail part and assembly product design and development phase contribute to about three-fourths of the total cost spent in its entire product life cycle and determine the fate of the aircraft’s life as a whole. Each aerospace design organization presently has developed their own set of design rules, focusing on improving product design capability by enhancing the determined “Design for X” factor, with the focus on continual optimization and improvements. However there is huge variation among these design principles due to the nonstandardization of these design guidelines. To meet this gap, the use of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA^®) principles applicable for aerospace has to be developed. DFMA^®) principles have been proven effective as guidelines to designers and manufacturing engineers in various discrete manufacturing and process industries. The use of DFMA^® principles have resulted in proactively simplifying designs with reduced product costs and improved efficiencies in product design. Aerospace Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) industries are highly oligopolistic in nature, and their designs are widely reliant on the specific intellectual knowledge gained by designers through years of trainings and experiences. Standardization and optimization of manufacturing processes of “Build-To-Print” organizations had recently started to increase, due to the continual efforts of the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) and its sector members aiming to improve their global supply chain performance. However, standardizing design methodologies, through the use of proven tools like Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP), are still in the initial stages. Thus, there is a tremendous opportunity for research on the application of the existing DFMA^® guidelines to aerospace part and process designs, aiming to simplify and standardize design methodologies by building on existing industry practices which have a common platform for design communication and which are easy to adopt within the existing process/systems. This technical paper presents the findings and learnings from the research presently carried that focuses on the application of the existing DFMA^® guidelines specifically to aerospace part and process designs. The aerospace ADFMA concept is also proposed to focus on the application of the existing DFMA^® guidelines to aerospace part and process designs, which can be used as a reference for aerospace designers for future and current designs.