Design for Assembly is a process by which products are designed with ease of assembly in mind. If a product contains fewer parts it will take less time to assemble, thereby reducing assembly costs. In addition, if the parts are provided with features which make it easier to grasp, move, orient and insert them, this will also reduce assembly time and assembly costs. The reduction of the number of parts in an assembly has the added benefit of generally reducing the total cost of parts in the assembly. This is usually where the major cost benefits of the application of design for assembly occur.
Design for assembly can take different forms. In the 1960s and 70's various rules and recommendations were proposed in order to help designers consider assembly problems during the design process. Many of these rules and recommendations were presented together with practical examples showing how assembly difficulty could be improved. However, it was not until the 1970s that numerical evaluation methods were developed to allow design for assembly studies to be carried out on existing and proposed designs.
The first evaluation method was developed at Hitachi and was called the Assembly Evaluation Method (AEM). This method is based on the principle of "one motion for one part." For more complicated motions, a point-loss standard is used and the ease of assembly of the whole product is evaluated by subtracting points lost. The method was originally developed in order to rate assemblies for ease of automatic assembly.
Design for assembly can take different forms. In the 1960s and 70's various rules and recommendations were proposed in order to help designers consider assembly problems during the design process. Many of these rules and recommendations were presented together with practical examples showing how assembly difficulty could be improved. However, it was not until the 1970s that numerical evaluation methods were developed to allow design for assembly studies to be carried out on existing and proposed designs.
The first evaluation method was developed at Hitachi and was called the Assembly Evaluation Method (AEM). This method is based on the principle of "one motion for one part." For more complicated motions, a point-loss standard is used and the ease of assembly of the whole product is evaluated by subtracting points lost. The method was originally developed in order to rate assemblies for ease of automatic assembly.
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