Mechanisms and coherences of robust design methodology: A robust design process proposal

摘要

Reliability and satisfactory performance without failure is important in the quality of mechanical products. One method to achieve this is to use robust design (RD) so that the developed products will be insensitive to noise factors (type I RD) and variations in the design parameters (type II RD). In the early design phases, type II RD plays a crucial role in ensuring flexibility in the design space. Many companies have successfully used RD or variations of it in their product design process. However, some studies in UK, Sweden and USA show that there are still lots of unsuccessful cases of RD applications. The lack of a coherent approach has been found to be the major reason for failure. Though many toolsets of RD are available in the literature, it is not clear how these are connected, the order in which they need to be used and how to convert the mind-set of RD into an ordered set of activities. The article lists methods available in RD, the relationship among these methods and identifies how these relate to activities of the design engineers. A RD process is proposed based on general design activities which will support the design engineer throughout the product design process.