Framework for Developing Engineering Standards to Obviate Inefficient Trial and Error in Design Process of Engineering Plastic Parts

Abstract

Design process of the engineering plastic parts is performed by several companies, and the companies systematize experiences to prepare standards for proceeding the design process. According to the prepared standards, they revise product design to fulfill requirements. These standards are collectively referred to as “engineering standards” which comprise design standards including standard designs and guidelines to modify the same. Further, since development of the engineering plastic parts is managed on a project basis where they have competitions to select their counterparts, each company necessarily develops its engineering standards separately. Under the above situation, the companies introduce computer aided engineering (CAE) environment to achieve efficient design revision. The CAE environment was expected to eliminate redundant design revision and evaluation. However, due to inconsistency of the design standards among the companies, inefficient trial-and-error approach is not avoidable in the design process. The companies have to adjust simulation results obtained from the counterparts according to their own design standards to be used in their design revision. Such an adjustment is an ad-hoc approach to be repeated in each project. In view of the project-based management, however, the design standards cannot be adjusted to be consistent. Therefore, to overcome the inefficient trial-and-error approach, the present paper proposes a framework for coordinating the design standards that conforms to the structure of engineering plastic industry. The framework was developed by incorporating activities for coordinating the design standards to the previously reported reference business process model for the design process. Whether the developed framework can coordinate the design standards between different companies was confirmed by simulating two illustrative examples. In the simulation, the framework described the process of updating the design standards. Accordingly, the developed framework was confirmed to be effective to resolve the inefficient trial-and-error approach.