Simulation-based evaluation for the feasibility analysis of product design changes

In today's large scale manufacturing industries, decision making for responding to the customer's requirement in terms of product design changes is an indispensable issue to be resolved. In order to make the decision of accepting or rejecting the change request by customers, company first needs to obtain information about the significant areas where they will allocate money and time for handling the requested changes, then evaluate the change feasibility. This work aims to provide an approach to identify those significant impact aspects for handling the product design changes under various different scenarios. A simulation-based evaluation approach for the change feasibility analysis is proposed, which constitutes one sub-section of an integrated framework for change assessment, planning and evaluation that is also summarized in this paper. For the main part of this article, we identified five major impact factors on the design and manufacturing fields, which influence the design change feasibility analysis. A generic discrete-event simulation model is then emphasized, followed by its inputs and outputs discussions. A 2 ⁵ factorial experimental design is constructed and the ANOVA analysis is performed. Based on the regression model and response surface plots obtained from the experiments, the desirable levels of impact factors are provided.