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During the design of a new product, the generation of assembly sequences plans (ASPs) has become one of the most important problems taken into account by researchers. In fact, a good mounting order allows the time decrease of the assembly process which leads to the reduction of production costs. In this context, researchers developed several methods to generate and optimize ASP based on various criteria. Although this paper aims to improve the quality of ASP it is necessary to increase the number of criteria which must be taken into account when generating ASPs.

In this paper, an ASP generation approach, which is based on three main algorithms, is proposed. The first one generates a set of assembly sequences based on stability criteria. The obtained results are treated by the second algorithm which is based on assembly tools (ATs) workspace criterion. An illustrative example is used to explain the different steps of this proposed approach. Moreover, a comparative study is done to highlight its advantages.

The proposed algorithm verifies, for each assembly sequence, the minimal required workspace of used AT and eliminates the ASPs non-respecting this criterion. Finally, the remaining assembly sequences are treated by the third algorithm to reduce the AT change during the mounting operation.

The proposed approach introduces the concept of AT workspace to simulate and select ASPs that respect this criterion. The dynamic interference process allows the eventual collision detection between tool and component and avoids it. The proposed approach reduces the AT change during the mounting operations.

Within the current industrial context, companies aim to decrease the design process time and cost. The multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) appears as a solution to accelerate the process and support designers in different stages of the design cycle. However, this relatively new concept needs to be integrated efficiently in the industrial environment and issues related to collaboration, data management, traceability and reuse need to be overcome.

The aim of this work is to efficiently integrate the MDO in the industrial design cycle by means of knowledge management (KM) techniques. To take into account the industrial environment, the methodology was applied in a collaborative software.

An example of collaborative design and optimization of an electronic throttle body (ETB) controller is presented with industrial requirements. The design problem was solved successfully and demonstrates the efficiency of the methodology in collaborative environments.

The contributions of this work lie in the structuration of the knowledge to support MDO and the definition of a general way to connect the existent MDO tools to the knowledge base. This methodology will enable to freely link different steps of the design process and reduce considerably the setting time of MDO in industries.