Highlighting product issues during design phase using functional analysis

Abstract

The major costs of a product take place in product design stage and essential elements like i. e. ease of assembly, components accessibility in an assembly, disassembly, number of parts have to be taken into account during product design stage. The paper aim is to gain understanding and improvement of overall engineering skills and thinking of engineering students with regard to the design/redesign process for a product from a functional perspective with the aim of extracting information for design and manufacturing associated design. The model is based on functional modelling and analysis of product using Function Block Diagram. Functional analysis helps to identify components’ functions and interactions between products parts, they describing also, the functioning. Analysing these functions and interactions between product’s parts offer an overview on their number, their interactions useful for example in assembly. Starting from a functional modelling and analysis, creativity techniques could be used in order to generate alternative solutions with regard to products design, manufacturing and assembly.