Mike J. Van Wie, James L. Greer, Matthew I. Campbell, Kristin L. Wood
Department of Mechanical Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
Robert B. Stone
Basic Engineering Department
University of Missouri-Rolla
Rolla, MO 65409-0210
In product architecture design, designers assign forms to functional elements of the product. While many methods exist to define a product’s architecture in terms of modules or platforms, few address the embodiment issues of module interfaces, i.e. the connections between modules. In this paper guidelines for redesign to reduce assembly costs are distilled from a study of existing product layouts. Module interface complexity and number are found to directly affect final costs and a representation scheme is developed to monitor the interface state of a product.