Approach for Integrating Tolerance Control into Product Design Stage

Ever-increasing competition in global markets forces companies to manufacture higher-quality products faster than their competitors. In this context it is imperative taking in account all manufacturing and quality control aspects in the early design phase. The right prescription of the GD&T tolerances has a meaningful impact on the whole product development process. The designer has to be able to take rapid decisions in order to minimize cost and maximize quality. The decision-making process has to be supported by proper data usually generated in the design department. The aim of this research work is the centralization of product development phases into design stage. In particular an approach is proposed in order to transfer the tolerancing activities from the manufacturing shop floor to the product design department. The approach is concretized in a set of software and hardware tools able to: simulate and plan the GD&T quality control, manage the measurement system, analyze the acquired data and improve the tolerance prescriptions. A set of metrics has been identified in order to evaluate advantages and limitations of the proposed approach.