Improving Product Design Using a Fuzzy-Evolutionary Approach to Predict and Optimize the Assembly Time of a New Product

In this paper, an application of the fuzzy-evolutionary method to the well known Boothroy-Dewhurst design for assembly methodology is proposed. This hybrid methodology analyzes and optimizes manual assembly for different assembly situations and conditions, identifies sources of variability in process assembly time to new products. The fuzzy logic system represents a model for predicting assembly time given some conditions of the pieces involved. There is particular interest in finding the conditions that a piece must have in order to get achieve short assembly time. These conditions can be found by evolution strategies. The evolutionary algorithm searches the set of inputs or conditions in the fuzzy model and uses the predicted time to evaluate every set of inputs generated. The experimental results show that is possible to conclude that the fuzzy-evolutionary strategy method is a suitable methodology for predicting and optimizing the assembly time of new products