In concurrent engineering, the integration of the designers' knowledge and experience, and computer technology into the design process is very important to improve design quality and production efficiency. A feasible design alternative that follows the design rules for assembly will make product manufacturing and assembly more successful. However, designers seldom consider assembly problems in their product development processes. This drawback often occurs due to conflicts in communication between the design and production departments and will cause severe assembly and manufacturing problems. To assist designers with the assembly issue in the design process this research presents a contact relation matrix (CRM) approach to generate assembly sequences for product design. The procedure developed for the CRM approach is based on the four rules identified from the part contact relations and a matrix representation to match the recommended design alternative with the four rules. A procedure is then employed to identify the assembly priority for the recommended design alternative. The part assembly sequence is generated with a sorting procedure. A hand-held hairdryer and an Italian style coffee maker are used as cases to help explain the feasibility of the CRM approach. The results from this study should help designers to examine the possible part combinations and make the necessary modifications for the recommended design alternative. The CRM approach can also be linked with an existing matrix approach in generating and evaluating design alternatives. By integrating the CRM and matrix approaches, the design quality and efficiency will be greatly improved.
Recently, people have begun to realize the importance of child‐resistant (CR) medicine packaging. However, most manufacturers and designers have not been able to effectively provide prevention strategies or design criteria to protect consumers. This research proposes a systematic approach to analyze CR packaging design problems and experiments to evaluate the identified design parameters and to generate the most suitable CR medicine packaging design. The design of a CR packaging bottle is used as an example to help explain the development procedure. During the development procedure, user trials, questionnaires, and children's anthropometric data on bottle opening and hand operations are analyzed. Five design parameters, specifically the cap diameter, cap height, bottle height, bottle diameter, and torsion, are identified and used to perform a Taguchi orthogonal array experimental analysis. A computer‐aided design system is also built to help generate the most suitable design alternatives. The results should assist designers in determining the most important CR design parameters and their most suitable combinations for bottle and related CR medicine packaging design.
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