Tolerance design optimization on cost–quality trade-off using the Shapley value method

Part tolerance design is important in the manufacturing process of many complex products because it directly affects manufacturing cost and product quality. It is significant to develop a reasonable tolerance scheme considering the demands of cost and quality to reduce the production risk and provide a guide for supplier management. Traditionally, some kinds of cost objective functions or variation propagation models are often applied in part tolerance design. Moreover, designers usually solve the tolerance design problem by constructing a single-objective model, dealing with several single-objective problems, or establishing a comprehensive evaluating function combining several optimization objectives with different weights. These approaches may not adequately consider the interdependent and the interactional relations of various demands and balance them. This paper presents a kind of tolerance design approach at the early design stage of automotive parts based on the Shapley value method (SVM) of coalitional game theory considering the demands of manufacturing cost and product quality. First the part tolerance design problem is defined. The measuring data in regular production is collected instead of working on specific objective functions or design models. Then how the SVM is adopted to solve the tolerance design problem is discussed. Lastly, a tolerance design example of a vehicle front lamp demonstrates the application and the performance of the proposed method.