ROBUSTNESS OF CAPACITY DRIVEN DESIGN STRATEGIES

Concurrent engineering and design for manufacture and assembly have be come dominant strategies for closing the gap between design and manufa cture. However, the primary focus of these strategies is to design pro ducts that are easily built from a capability viewpoint. The technical literature has paid less attention to strategies that focus on the de sign of products that are suitable from a capacity viewpoint. Initial experimentation with capacity driven design concepts indicate that the y can be very beneficial. However, no comprehensive study has been com pleted to indicate the efficacy of the strategies in general terms. In this paper, the authors examine and quantify the performance and robu stness of capacity driven design strategies in a wide spectrum of alte rnative manufacturing scenarios. The results of simulation studies ind icate that capacity driven design strategies can be effective in a wid e array of manufacturing situations, and that future research in this area is warranted.