In today's business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbroken. Due to this development, the need of agile and reconfigurable production systems emerged to cope with various products and product families. To design and optimize production systems as well as to choose the optimal product matches, product analysis methods are needed. Indeed, most of the known methods aim to analyze a product or one product family on the physical level. Different product

more »

... ies, however, may differ largely in terms of the number and nature of components. This fact impedes an efficient comparison and choice of appropriate product family combinations for the production system. A new methodology is proposed to analyze existing products in view of their functional and physical architecture. The aim is to cluster these products in new assembly oriented product families for the optimization of existing assembly lines and the creation of future reconfigurable assembly systems. Based on Datum Flow Chain, the physical structure of the products is analyzed. Functional subassemblies are identified, and a functional analysis is performed. Moreover, a hybrid functional and physical architecture graph (HyFPAG) is the output which depicts the similarity between product families by providing design support to both, production system planners and product designers. An illustrative example of a nail-clipper is used to explain the proposed methodology. An industrial case study on two product families of steering columns of thyssenkrupp Presta France is then carried out to give a first industrial evaluation of the proposed approach. Abstract In this study, the measurement and optimization of the cutting forces during the milling process of M200 TS was carried out. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used in the design of the numerical experiment while and the dynamometer was employed for the measurement of the cutting forces during the physical experiment on a DMU80monoBLOCK Deckel Maho 5-axis CNC milling. The ranges of the process parameters are as follow: cutting speed (200-250 mm/min), feed per tooth (0.03-0.4 mm) and depth of cut (0.20-6.0 mm) while the cutting force serves as the response of the designed experiment. The results were analysed statistically to produce a mathematical model for the prediction of the values of the cutting forces as a function of the independent process parameters. Abstract In this study, the measurement and optimization of the cutting forces during the milling process of M200 TS was carried out. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used in the design of the numerical experiment while and the dynamometer was employed for the measurement of the cutting forces during the physical experiment on a DMU80monoBLOCK Deckel Maho 5-axis CNC milling. The ranges of the process parameters are as follow: cutting speed (200-250 mm/min), feed per tooth (0.03-0.4 mm) and depth of cut (0.20-6.0 mm) while the cutting force serves as the response of the designed experiment. The results were analysed statistically to produce a mathematical model for the prediction of the values of the cutting forces as a function of the independent process parameters. Abstract In this study, the measurement and optimization of the cutting forces during the milling process of M200 TS was carried out. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used in the design of the numerical experiment while and the dynamometer was employed for the measurement of the cutting forces during the physical experiment on a DMU80monoBLOCK Deckel Maho 5-axis CNC milling. The ranges of the process parameters are as follow: cutting speed (200-250 mm/min), feed per tooth (0.03-0.4 mm) and depth of cut (0.20-6.0 mm) while the cutting force serves as the response of the designed experiment. The results were analysed statistically to produce a mathematical model for the prediction of the values of the cutting forces as a function of the independent process parameters.