Uday Hameed Farhan, Majid Tolouei-Rad and Adam Osseiran
The purpose of this paper is to develop an assembly modelling approach to be applied with a software package, to assist in the design and assembly of special purpose machines…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop an assembly modelling approach to be applied with a software package, to assist in the design and assembly of special purpose machines (SPMs).
Design/methodology/approach
A database of SPM elements was established, and an assembly relationships graph was created. Mating conditions were identified between the SPM elements, and their assembly constraints were extracted and implemented in SolidWorks application programming interface.
Findings
The implementation of this assembly modelling approach was validated by selecting SPM layouts as examples. A significant reduction in the assembly time was achieved compared to the traditional assembly procedure for the same examples.
Originality/value
This is a new application of assembly modelling that assists engineers and designers in the design and assembly processes of SPMs. This approach can also be applied to other machine tools with similar attributes.
Details
Keywords
Uday Hameed Farhan, Majid Tolouei-Rad and Adam Osseiran
The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multiple criteria decision-making method, to assist selecting suitable machine…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multiple criteria decision-making method, to assist selecting suitable machine configurations for special purpose machines (SPMs) from available alternatives.
Design/methodology/approach
The necessary criteria and sub-criteria were identified and used in the developed model. The assessment process was carried out by constructing the hierarchy of four levels. Then, pairwise comparison matrices were created for each level to compute the weights for the alternatives. The model was programmed and implemented by software for practical use.
Findings
Different scenarios were obtained from the assessment process of the developed AHP model showing the influence of changing the relevant importance of the elements in the hierarchy on the selection of SPMs configurations. Selection of the suitable scenario was also affected by some factors of manufacturing preferences and industry recommendations such as cost and production rate.
Originality/value
This is a new application of AHP method which assists decision makers to select suitable configurations for SPMs, and reduce the time required for designing SPMs.