Interleaving assembly planning and design

The main objective of assembly planning is to determine a sequence of assembling a product with respect to its geometric and resource constraints. Recent strides toward concurrent engineering have called for a tighter integration of assembly planning with design, because often during assembly planning, one realizes that a significant amount of assembly cost can be cut by redesigning the product itself. Instead of "retroactively" redesigning a product upon assembly planning, a concurrent engineering platform must allow its users to evaluate designs, and "proactively" explore different alternatives at various levels of abstractions so that one can zoom in on "promising" design paths and design right within the first few design cycles. This paper presents such an integrated system in which assembly planning becomes an essential part of the design exploration process. An algorithm for assembly planning during design for such an environment is developed. Designing for assembly is more effective and correct because, for a particular sequence of assembly, different design alternatives can be created and evaluated.