" Do future enhancements address all the outstanding issues (e.g., missing functionality) that the
company has with the tool?
" Is there an effective mechanism for entering enhancement requests and bug reports?
" How rapidly is the tool being improved?
" If it is a commercial product, is the tool provider stable? If it is a tool developed in-house, does it have
a stable funding source?
It is vital that the selected CAT tool is growing and the tool provider is reliable. If it is, the investment
in a CAT tool has a far greater chance of delivering real returns to the company in terms of improved
quality and reduced cost.
15.6.8 Deployment
The issue of deploying a CAT tool in a company is too large to address within the scope of this chapter.
However, some questions that must be answered relative to deployment include:
" Who has responsibility for implementing the tool in the company?
" How much effort will be required internally to install and maintain the tool?
" Does the tool work on company-supported hardware and operating system versions?
In short, a deployment plan must comprehend all the infrastructure required to install and maintain
the CAT tool.
15.7 Summary
Automation can provide great benefits to the tolerancing process. Through automation, tolerance model
creation and analysis can be simplified and accuracy improved. The time it takes to develop an optimal
dimension scheme for a design can be greatly reduced. Automation can also improve the communication
between design and manufacturing and help develop a more concurrent engineering environment. Finally,
careful consideration of the important capability and usability issues will enable the successful selection
and deployment of tolerance automation tools.
15.8 References
1. Bralla, James G.1996. Design For Excellence. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
2. Bralla, James G. 1986. Handbook of Product Design for Manufacturing: A Practical Guide to Low-Cost
Production. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
3. Cox, N.D. 1979. Tolerance Analysis by Computer. Journal of Quality Technology. 11(2):80-87.
4. Creveling, C.M. 1997. Tolerance Design. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
Automating the Tolerancing Process 15-15
5. Gao, Jinsong. 1993. Nonlinear Tolerance Analysis of Mechanical Assemblies. Dissertation, Mechanical Engi-
neering Department, Brigham Young University.
6. Glancy, Charles. 1994. A Second-Order Method for Assembly Tolerance Analysis. Master s thesis. Mechanical
Engineering Department, Brigham Young University.
7. Harry, Mikel, and J.R. Lawson. 1992. Six Sigma Producibility Analysis and Process Characterization. Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
8. Johnson, N.L. 1965. Tables to facilitate fitting SU frequency curves. Biometrika 52(3 and 4):547-558.
9. Ramberg, J.S., P.R. Tadikamalla, E.J. Dudewicz, E.F. Mykytha. 1979. A Probability Distribution and Its Uses
in Fitting Data. Technometrics. 21(2):201-214.
10. Stoddard, James. 1995. Characterizing Kinematic Variation in Assemblies from Geometric Constraints. Master s
thesis. Mechanical Engineering Department. Brigham Young University. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]