Lucas Design for Assembly method applied at Hawker Siddeley Switchgear

Research has shown that up to 80% of a product´s cost is determined before it leaves the drawing board, it is therefore crucial that every effort is made to get the design right at this stage. Given this fact, Lucas in conjunction with the University of Hull developed the Design for Assembly (DFA) methodology which uses expert knowledge interpreted onto `look up´ charts to analyse the product design and compare it with `ideal´ values. Given a technique for structured evaluation, problems in a product design can be exposed and teamworking with multi disciplinary engineers can be carried out as a proven method for seeking solutions. The authors discuss the analysis procedure and its application to an auto-recloser