Axiomatic design as support for decision-making in a design for manufacturing context: A case study

Decision-making is one of the most critical issues in current engineering design models, including Concurrent Engineering. Design for Manufacturing is a powerful tool to provide manufacturing information to the designing process. Axiomatic design (AD) is an engineering design theory that provides a framework to decision-making in the designing process. This paper shows how AD allows for perceiving the relationships between each product and the related manufacturing processes. An example is used to describe how ADs information axiom could be applied to select the most appropriate manufacturing process in order to allow for the subsequent detail design of a mechanical component.