Axiomatic design guidelines for the design of flexible and agile manufacturing and assembly systems for SMEs

Complex market dynamics force enterprises to face new challenges. A manufacturing or assembly system has to create products based on customer requirements at the lowest possible price and to react rapidly to external changes such as market or political trends. In this regard, flexible and rapid changeable manufacturing and assembly systems are promising solutions to overcome these issues. In the past, small and medium-sized enterprises were less affected by unstable market dynamics thanks to their smaller and more manageable structures. This feature allowed to readapt the industrial facilities in a short time. The current market volatility also forces small and medium-sized enterprises to pursue innovative approaches. This work shows how an Axiomatic Design based approach could be successfully used to achieve these purposes by defining guidelines for the design of flexible and agile manufacturing and assembly systems, with a special focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using the Axiomatic Design approach and the software Acclaro DFFS, customer needs and functional requirements were defined and translated into a set of design guidelines for flexible and agile manufacturing and assembly systems for SMEs. This approach helps designers to optimize their designs at a very early stage before making costly decisions or performing effortful simulations or computer-aided engineering analyses.