An approach for improving maintainability performance of mechanical complex products at early stages of design process

Abstract

Although maintainability is regarded as an important parameter during Product Development Process (PDP), it is believed that the product maintenance is not properly considered by the development engineers. The difficulty further increases in complex mechanical products where a plurality of interfaces with different design groups exists. During the literature review, while classical literature is distant of real product development because it barely discusses PD in virtual environments, other newer studies from different sources propose impracticable mathematical algorithms or highly dependable virtual maintenance analysis based on expert’s knowledge in order to address such parameter. The thesis objective is to propose a model and associated techniques (directives) to improve maintainability parameter analysis during the virtual development in PDP. The proposed model was implemented in a plug-in format, in a commercial CAD software, with one function to track important aftermarket components and another to automatically evaluate fasteners access on such products. The proposed model was verified and validated in four different contexts: i/ functionality verification; ii/ contrast with Popescu and Iacob (2013) proposal; iii/ comparison with Junior (2015) plug-in; iv/ verification and data collection with a group of development engineers. Based on the obtained results can be inferred that the model assists the development engineers to improve the application of the maintainability parameter being less dependent on the area specialists. Research conclusions and proposals to support future studies are offered.