Prediction of Defect Propensity for the Manual Assembly of Automotive Electrical Connectors

Assembly for automotive production represents a significant proportion of total manufacturing cost, manufacturing time, and overall product cost. Humans remain a cost effective solution to adapt to the requirements of increasing product complexity and variety present in today's flexible manufacturing systems. The human element present in the manufacturing system necessitates a better understanding of the human role in manufacturing complexity. Presented herein is a framework for enumerating assembly variables correlated with the potential for quality defect, presented in the design, process, and human factors domain. A case study is offered that illustrates on a manual assembly process the effect that complexity variables have on assembly quality.