An applied methodology for tolerance design based on concurrent engineering

Tolerance design is an important part of the product development and manufacturing process. Studies show that using a reliable and efficient tolerance design method can effectively improve product quality and reduce manufacturing costs. Although numerous studies have been carried out in the area of tolerance analysis, combining the tolerance analysis with the concurrent engineering theory has been rarely studied so far. In order to resolve this shortcoming, a comprehensive tolerance design methodology based on concurrent engineering was proposed in the present study to shorten the product development cycle, improve product quality, and reduce manufacturing costs. To this end, experts from different engineering fields were employed to form a concurrent engineering team that works together. The tolerance design activities were divided into seven stages, including design requirements definition, dimension chain identification, initial geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, variation analysis, release technical specification, validation, and continuous improvement. Then the detailed work process of each stage is presented. Based on the Monte Carlo theory and 3D computer-aided tolerance software, a variation analysis framework was proposed. Finally, the gap between taillight and bodyside was considered a test case, and a specific operation method of tolerance design using this framework is expounded. In the studied cases, the calculated and measured mean value of the gap was 1.5 and 1.5368 mm, respectively, indicating the simulation error of 2.5 %. The obtained results show that the gap tolerance by the proposed method is consistent with the tolerance fluctuation in actual production.