The early stages of product design are critical for incorporating manufacturing perspectives. Recognizing the significance of assembly indiscrete product manufacturing, the study emphasizes the need to consider the intricacies of assembly early in the design stages. While existing research has addressed assembly features, especially for insertion, this study focuses on handling features, seeking to bridge the gap in their comprehensive representation within the product model. Based on a relational analysis, product characteristics relevant for handling were identified and represented by using a modeling strategy that facilitates their timely addition to the product model. A case study was developed to demonstrate its application. The main contributions of this work comprise an extensive list of product characteristics related to handling processes, a proposal for integrating these characteristics into the product model, and a collaborative way to define product features during product design. Future research directions point to the establishment of a model-based definition for assembly processes, paving the way for enhanced cross-disciplinary communication in the fields of product design and assembly planning.

Information exchange is a fundamental process for manufacturing enterprises, especially when the product data needs to be exchanged between different domains, areas, or external suppliers during the product lifecycle. Lack of standardized information management processes, undefined information requirements from both parties, and incompatible formats to exchange information lead to delays in product development and therefore, economic losses. An alternative that has demonstrated benefits when carrying product manufacturing information is the Model-based definition (MBD) approach. A preparatory step to structure an MBD application for a specific domain is to define its data content, which can be built upon a categorization of product requirements for the target domain. The presented study proposes a method that starts by studying the interactions between involved stakeholders and the related information exchanged at each stage of the development of a component, and results in a categorization of requirements to support assembly planning, enhancing product realization. Enhanced product realization can lead to shorter development time, better supplier compliance to the requirements, and fewer errors in the physical interfaces. Future work is to use the categorized requirements as a base to build an MBD structure for exchanging assembly-related information.

Process and quality planning are prerequisites for the production of qualified products at competitive cost. Today´s document-based work methods are not effective as valuable time is spent on document creation and document management instead of being spent on innovation and process improvements. Information duplication is an inevitable consequence with current document-based work methods where the same information is described in different ways, at many places, across many different documents. This paper presents a model-driven approach where vital manufacturing information is described once, at one place, and in one way, enabling improved work methods for cross-organizational process and quality planning.

Process planning is the activity of determining the manufacturing operations needed to produce a product. The knowledge work of process planning has been thoroughly investigated. Several ideas to automate process planning have been proposed but their success in practice has not yet been realized. Little attention has been given to design as an inevitable element in process planning and the role of human expertise in process design. From the premise that competent planners are a primary source of productivity this paper discusses process design, the role of human expertise and how CAPP systems could support human decision making.

Systematic process planning is a key enabler for robust product realization from design through manufacturing. Every process and operation must be designed in the best possible way to ensure that the overall process chain leads to the right product quality. During the last two decades a shift from inspection of manufactured products to a more holistic approach with quality assurance as an integrated activity throughout the product realization process has emerged in manufacturing industry. The importance of the principles addressed in the methods and tools used in automotive industry for quality management is indisputable. However, the tasks of creating and managing documents for Process Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (PFMEA), Control plans, Initial process studies and Measurement System Analysis (MSA) results in high workload. Also, lack of interoperability between different computer applications used in process planning and quality assurance results in information fragmentation, data duplication and potential data inconsistency. This paper proposes a novel, model driven approach for process planning integrating quality assurance which emphasizes the application of digital models to create, represent and use information of products, processes and resources. By reducing the amount of data and document duplication, the presented model driven approach has potential to radically increase the direct value adding part of manufacturing engineer's daily work also contributing to achieve a more holistic view in interdisciplinary work between different experts in product realization.

Today, for development of product and production, computer-aided design and manufacturing (CADCAM) maintain a significant role in interaction activities between human and computers. The major objective of computer-aided technology is to simplify engineer's work in collecting, using, and sharing information so that human can maximize the usage of their unique abilities, e.g. creativity and innovation. User experiences (UX) will substantially determine outcomes of such intellectual engineering activities during human computer interaction (HCI) with the CADCAM systems. Usability is a key feature of software ergonomic, and has been standardized as an important property of software quality. Concerns for usability of all kinds of ordinary software interface have been expressed by a lot of studies. Evaluation is always a central activity when practicing usability in an iterative product development process. It can be expected that employment of usability evaluation for CADCAM will be highly valued towards a better level of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Nevertheless, researches involving usability in this particular domain are very rare. This paper reviews a limited number of publications with such concerns and investigates the current context of use of CADCAM software. Then existing evaluation techniques are introduced and discussed for their feasibility in manufacturing industry based on previous studies.

Process planning is a central, knowledge extensive and important activityin a manufacturing company. During process planning, countless decisions are made,many times based upon the process planner´s tacit knowledge, based on years ofexperience. The knowledge gap between the expert and the novice is wide.Narrowing this gap, taking the novice towards becoming expert, is an objective ofeducation. This paper presents a solution for model-based interactive learning ofprocess planning, validated through application in master level productionengineering courses.

Propagation of shape variations in multi-step manufacturing processes, constrained by tolerance chains, is the consequence of sequenced operations defined in process planning. A key task in process planning is to define in-process workpiece (IPW) tolerances for efficient production ensuring conformance to the product design specification and good utilisation of the manufacturing resources. A dimension dependency chart has been developed for analysis of linked IPW tolerance chains and simulation of shape variation propagation caused by systematic and random errors. The results show how the traditional process capability index, used as an acceptance criterion for IPW tolerancing, limits the process performance utilisation.

Information management for manufacturing resources such as cutting tools is an important research topic in the context of cloud manufacturing. Vendors and customers usually use catalogues to communicate information for such manufacturing resource. Incompatibilities of information in syntax, semantics, and structure among supply chains often result in inefficient manual sharing and management of the catalogue information. It is difficult for cloud based applications to pool information from various sources. This communication failure calls for a system neutral solution for data modeling and exchange to enhance interoperability of the cutting tool catalogue information. Previous studies has present solutions for representation of the cutting tool information with STEP AP242 (ISO/DIS 10303-242) with semantic classification referring to a PLib (ISO 13584, Part Library) based dictionary. This approach can be extended for the catalogue modeling, due to functionalities for specification and configuration control of general product variants in the same standard. With a modeling approach with standardized information schemas, system architecture to guide implementation is proposed to enhance the communication in practice. Relative elements to represent vendors' catalogues and customers' requirements are modeled. Associations to the PLib-based dictionary complete semantics and enable information mapping between vendors and customers. Principles of the mapping are identified to facilitate implementation of related software systems. Prototypes are developed to verify the proposed system architecture. The proposed solution is promising to migrate to other types of products than cutting tools, because the data models are based on the general product models defined in AP242.

Industry needs a system neutral solution for exchange of kinematic models. In this article, the first known valid implementation of kinematic mechanisms based on ISO 10303 Standard for the Exchange of Product (STEP) is presented. The result includes an implementation framework and two developed prototypes. Two major challenges of standard-based development are identified and generalised: data integration and system integration, which are solved by the framework. The two prototypes are implemented to establish kinematic data exchange between Siemens NX® and STEP-NC Machine^TM via STEP AP214 files. Experiences of design and development of the applications are presented, and a validated case study of data exchange using the developed applications is shown. There are other attempts of using STEP as basis for modelling, but as the first valid STEP implementation on kinematics, this approach demonstrates the feasibility of pure STEP-based data exchange for kinematic mechanisms. The prototypes also show potential of utilising the framework for general standard implementations. The research is expected to motivate deeper understanding and extensive applications of the STEP standard in industry and academia.