Design for manufacture and assembly on the Internet

The Internet technology has evolved very rapidly over the past few years. Due to its multimedia capability, the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) is the most popular and visible component of the Internet. It is being increasingly used to support various activities of the product development process. This paper is concerned with providing design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA) techniques on the Internet. An experiment is conducted to show how a well-known design for assembly (DFA) technique can be converted into a web-based version which is functionally equivalent to its version on a standalone workstation. Four important insights have been gained from the experiment. The web-based client and server architecture is found to be attractive for collaborative DFMA. The client-side web scripting can be exploited to develop generic frameworks for developing and applying different design for X (DFX) techniques, more importantly, in an integrated way. In addition, web-based DFX techniques provide more opportunities for integration with other decision-support systems such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) and Computer Aided Production Management (CAPM) in the product realisation process. However, issues such as interactivity and security remain to be addressed.