Design of Changeable Production Units within the Automotive Sector with Axiomatic Design

Corporations within the automotive sector are faced with major challengescaused among othersby high volatile demand fluctuations. An answer to this problem is given by flexible and changeable production systems which allow reactingefficiently to these fluctuations in demand. To achieve this aim, so called enablers for changeability have to be considered already during the design process of single production units within a whole production system. Furthermore the complexity of production units has to be reduced in order to obtain changeable and reliable manufacturing systems.In the presented paper an approach is proposed with the aim to consider enablers of changeability in Axiomatic Design (AD). Moreover it is outlined which different interest groups within a single corporation have a direct or indirect influence on production unit design. Frequently complexity originates from many different attributes demanded by the single groups. On this basis, it is demonstrated how AD can help to enter into dialogue with the mentioned groups with the aim to lower the requirements of the production unit and to reduce complexity of the resulting design. This is done by using the design matrix which illustrates the dependencies between functional requirements (FRs) and design parameters (DPs) as a basis for discussion.