A Product Development Approach in The Field of Micro-Assembly with Emphasis on Conceptual Design

Faster product lifecycles make long-term investments in machines for micro assembly riskier. Therefore, reconfigurable manufacturing systems gain more and more attention. But most companies are uncertain if a reconfigurable manufacturing system can fulfill their needs and justify the initial investment. New and improved techniques for product development have the potential to foster the utilization and decrease the investment risk for such systems. In this paper, four different methods for product development are reviewed. A set of criteria regarding micro assembly on reconfigurable manufacturing systems RMS is established. Based on those criteria and the assessment, a novel approach for a product development method is provided, which tries to combine the strengths of the beforehand presented approaches. It focuses on the conceptual design phase to overcome the customers’ uncertainty in the development process. For this, an abstract representation of a micro-assembly product idea as well as a decision tree for joining processes are established and validated by real product ideas using expert interviews. The validation shows that the conceptual design phase can be used as a useful tool in the product development process in the field of micro assembly.