Robust Tolerance Synthesis

Chang-Xue (Jack) Feng

Associate Professor, ASME Member,
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing
Engineering and Technology,
Bradley University,
Peoria, IL 61625
Andrew Kusiak
Professor,
Intelligent Systems Laboratory,
Department of Industrial Engineering,
The University of Iowa,
Iowa City, IA 52242-1527
With the Design of Experiments
Approach
Design of tolerances impacts quality, cost, and cycle time of a product. Most literature on
deterministic tolerance design has focused on developing exact and heuristic algorithms
to minimize manufacturing cost. Some research has been published on probabilistic tol-
erance synthesis and optimization. This paper presents the design of experiments (DOE)
approach for concurrent selection of component tolerances and the corresponding manu-
facturing processes. The objective is to minimize the variation of tolerance stackups.
Numerical examples illustrate the methodology. The Monte Carlo simulation approach is
used to obtain component tolerances and tolerance stackups. Process shift, the worst case
and root sum square tolerance stackup constraints, and setup reduction constraints have
been incorporated into the proposed methodology. Benefits of the proposed DOE ap-
proach over exact algorithms are discussed. 关S1087-1357共00兲00202-1兴

Introduction linear programming approach to robust tolerance design for reli-

ability rather than for quality. Jeang 关3兴 and Kapur 关5兴 adopted
Design of tolerances impacts the quality, cost, and cycle time of
Taguchi methods to tolerance design. This paper proposes a meth-
a product. Taguchi methods have been extensively used in param-
odology for applying the DOE approach to minimize sensitivity of
eter design 关1,2兴 and tolerance design 关3–5兴. Although, in general,
tolerances to manufacturing process variation, i.e., robust design
Taguchi methods have been successful in making the performance
of tolerances for quality for skewed and centered processes. The
of a product 共process兲 insensitive to noise parameters, some of the
DOE approach presented in this paper extends the approach pre-
tactical methods, e.g., orthogonal arrays, signal-to-noise ratios, sented in Kusiak and Feng 关26兴 in the following aspects:
linear graphs, and accumulation analysis, have a room for im-
provement 关6,7兴. Some suggestions for improvement are provided • A skewed process is considered in addition to the centered
in Box et al. 关8兴, Montgomery 关7兴, Pignatiello and Ramberg 关9兴, process.
and León et al. 关10兴. The design of experiments 共DOE兲 approach • The root sum square 共RSS兲 model is used in addition to the
was reviewed in Steinberg and Hunter 关11兴, and Montgomery worst case 共WC兲 model to calculate the tolerance stackup.
关12兴. Little work has been reported on applying the DOE approach • The setup constraint is considered.
to tolerance design. This paper presents a DOE approach to proba-
bilistic design of tolerances for quality 共minimum variation and
defective rate兲. 2 The Tolerance Synthesis Model
There are two complementary processes in tolerance design: The tolerance synthesis model will be discussed using the as-
analysis and synthesis. In tolerance analysis, the tolerances of sembly of Fig. 1 with dimensions A, B, C, D, and E. The toler-
functional dimensions are specified and the resulting assembly ances assigned to these dimensions are to meet the tolerance
variation and yield are calculated. The tolerances determined in stackup limit T of dimension F.
analysis are the functional tolerances. In tolerance synthesis 共TS兲,
tolerances are assigned to the component dimensions to assure the 2.1 The Cost-Tolerance Relationship. In general, the
accumulated tolerances satisfy the tolerance stackup constraint. tighter the tolerance, the larger the manufacturing cost of obtain-
The tolerances determined in synthesis define the manufacturing ing the tolerance required. Therefore, the manufacturing cost
process. This paper concentrates on tolerance synthesis 共TS兲.
The literature on tolerance design has been reviewed by Voel-
cker 关13兴, Zhang and Huq 关14兴, Chase and Parkinson 关15兴, and
Wu et al. 关16兴. Two categories of objectives have been used in TS
in the literature: 共1兲 minimization of the manufacturing cost, i.e.,
design of tolerances for cost 共DTFC兲, and 共2兲 minimization of the
sensitivity of tolerances to manufacturing variations, i.e., design
of tolerances for quality 共DTFQ兲. Among the approaches in the
first category 共i.e., DTFC兲, exact algorithms and heuristics have
been explored in the literature, e.g., integer programming 关17兴,
branch and bound algorithms 关18兴, sequential quadratic program-
ming and exhaustive search 关19兴, nonlinear programming 关20兴,
simulated annealing 关21兴, and Monte Carlo simulation 关22兴. A
comprehensive review of probabilistic tolerance design is pro-
vided in Evans 关23兴, Parkinson 关24兴, and Zhang and Huq 关14兴.
Tolerance synthesis with an objective of minimizing variation
of a manufacturing process has received attention in the literature.
Parkinson et al. 关24兴 and Belegundu and Zhang 关25兴 used a non-

Contributed by the Manufacturing Engineering Division for publication in the

JOURNAL OF MANUFACTURING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING. Manuscript received
Dec. 1998; revised May 1999. Associate Technical Editor: E. C. DeMeter. Fig. 1 Tolerances of the shaft assembly

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 function with respect to tolerances can be modeled as a piecewise
linear convex function. A general discussion of cost-tolerance
charts is provided in Peat 关27兴 and Girth 关28兴.
Figure 2 illustrates a typical piecewise linear relationship be-
tween manufacturing cost and the corresponding tolerances for
generating dimension C of the shaft and dimensions A and B of
the caps in Fig. 1.
Although the exact manufacturing cost may not be known for
each tolerance, only the relative cost is sufficient to select an
appropriate manufacturing process. For example, if it is more ex-
pensive to machine a shaft than a cap to the same tolerance, the
relative manufacturing cost of the shaft is higher than that of the
cap, and vise versa. Assuming that three process alternatives are
available for generating dimension C of the shaft, two for dimen-
sions A and B of the two caps and two types of bearings with
different dimension for D and E, the process-tolerance-cost rela-
tionship is represented in Fig. 3. Note that only the processes with
the three sigma 共3␴兲 values that are smaller than the required
single side 共unilateral兲 component tolerance are the candidates for
selection. For example, even though a process with 3␴ value of 6
is available for generating dimension A in Fig. 1, it is not a can-
didate for tolerance synthesis as it does not satisfy the functional
requirement of the single side component tolerance of 5. There-
fore, when a tolerance is selected, the manufacturing process is
also determined. Thus the manufacturability of the tolerance is
ensured.
2.2 The Normal Distribution Law. In this paper, it is as-
sumed that the dimensions produced by a manufacturing process
follow a normal distribution.
2.3 The Process Shift. Process shift is a shift of the manu-
Fig. 2 The relationship between manufacturing cost and toler-
ances
Fig. 3 The process-tolerance-cost relationship
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facturing process mean as opposed to the design mean 共target
value兲 due to, for example, a setup error, measurement error, vi-
bration, and tool wear.
Let ␴ be the standard deviation of a process and assume a 1.5␴
process shift. This value is widely used in the Motorola six sigma
quality program 关29兴. Given the value ␮ C of the centered process1
mean, and the value ␮ S of the skewed process mean, the follow-
ing equation holds
␮ S ⫽ ␮ C ⫹1.5␴ (1)
The process shift increases the number of defects of components
and assemblies.
2.4 The Process Capability Index. In order to measure ro-
bustness of a process assigned to a functional tolerance, the pro-
cess capability index for a centered process is defined as follows
关30兴:
USL i ⫺LSL i
C p⫽ (2)
6␴ij
ti
For symmetric tolerances C p⫽ (3)
3␴ij
where:
USL i ⫽ tolerance upper specification limit for dimension i
LSL i ⫽ tolerance lower specification limit for dimension i
␴ i j ⫽ standard deviation of process j used to produce dimen-
sion i
t i ⫽ single side design tolerance of dimension i
For detailed discussion of process capability indices, see Kane
关31兴 and Kotz and Johnson 关32兴. When the six sigma value of a
process is identical to the full range design tolerance, then C p
⫽1. For the normal distribution and a process mean centered at
the nominal dimension, the 3␴ tolerance design scheme produces
2,700 defects per million items. In six sigma quality design, a
process with 3␴ value of 3 is assigned to generate a dimension
with a single side tolerance of 6 共i.e., C p ⫽2兲. In this case, a
⫾1.5␴ process shift will lead to at most 7 defects per million 关29兴,
virtually zero defects.
2.5 The Process Independence Law. It is generally as-
sumed in the literature on tolerance synthesis that the processes
used to produce different dimensions are independent 关33兴. This
implies that the interactions between factors can be ignored in the
analysis of variance.
2.6 The Tolerance Stackup Approaches. Three ap-
proaches to tolerance stackups are used in tolerance synthesis: the
worst case 共WC兲, the root sum square 共RSS兲, and the Monte Carlo
simulation 关15兴.
The worst case 共WC兲 model for tolerance stackup assumes that
the worst case tolerances for an assembly occur simultaneously,
i.e.,
I
兺 ␦ ⭐⌬
i⫽1
i k (4)
where: i is the dimension number, k is the dimensional chain
number, ␦ i is the full range tolerance for dimension i, and ⌬ k is
the tolerance stackup for dimensional chain k. For symmetric tol-
erances
I
兺 t ⭐T
i⫽1
i k (5)
1
A process is centered when its process mean is identical to the nominal value of
the corresponding dimension.
AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 521
 where: T k is the single side tolerance stackup for dimensional
chain k. Frequently, the inequalities 共4兲 and 共5兲 are called WC
constraints.
The root sum square 共RSS兲 model for tolerance stackup as-
sumes that the worst case tolerances for an assembly occur statis-
tically rather than simultaneously, i.e.,
冑兺
I
␦ i2 ⭐⌬ k (6)
i⫽1
For symmetric tolerances
冑兺
I Example 1. Solve the tolerance synthesis problem 共TSP兲 in
共 t i 兲 2 ⭐T k (7)
i⫽1
In the Monte Carlo simulation approach tolerances are accumu-
lated statistically from the random data of component tolerances.
2.7 The Setup Constraint. Setup reduction is key to imple-
menting JIT production 关34兴, and it can be achieved by process
improvement, e.g., by the methods presented in Shingo 关34兴 and
Feng and Kusiak 关35,36兴. The conventional models for tolerance
synthesis, e.g., Ostwald and Huang 关17兴, Monte and Datseris 关37兴,
and Chase et al. 关19兴, do not consider setup constraints.
3 Designing the Experiment
3.1 The Methodology.
Factors and Levels. In tolerance synthesis, a component di-
mension is considered as a factor. The process alternatives applied
to generate the corresponding dimensional tolerances are consid-
ered as different levels. Depending on the number of process al-
ternatives, the number of levels might be two, three, mixed, and
so on.
Replicates. In the DOE approach applied to tolerance synthesis,
first the component tolerances are generated from the Monte Carlo
simulation, then the tolerance stackup is computed using either the
WC or RSS model 共constraints兲. For the tolerance data obtained
from the Monte Carlo simulation, the WC model is used, other-
wise, the RSS model should be applied.
Response. In deterministic tolerance design, a frequently used
objective is to minimize the machining 共assembly兲 cost of com-
ponents 共assemblies兲. Thus, the response is the total machining
共assembly兲 cost. However, in probabilistic tolerance synthesis, the
objective is often to minimize the variation of the tolerance
stackup. Therefore, the response should be the variance of the
longest dimensional chain. Based on the tolerance stackup con-
straint, two responses, the worst case response and the root sum
square response, are considered. Furthermore, the process shift is
incorporated into each response.
Constraints. The standard DOE approach does not consider any
constraints. In order to apply the DOE approach to tolerance syn-
thesis, additional columns need to be incorporated into the facto-
rial design matrix. Figure 4 illustrates the case with multiple di-
mensional chains. Table 1 shows the constraint columns for the
problem in Fig. 4. Since T 2 is the tolerance stackup in the longest
dimensional chain in Fig. 4, the standard variation of this toler-
ance stackup is used as a response 共see Table 1兲.
Fig. 4 Two dimensional chain
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Table 1
3.2 Illustrative Examples
Figs. 1 and 3 with the DOE approach. Minimize the manufactur-
ing cost subject to the WC and RSS constraints. As five dimen-
sions are to be designed, the number of factors is five, i.e., A, B, C,
D, and E. Since two process alternatives for dimensions A, B, D,
and E are available 共see Fig. 3兲, the number of levels for these
factors is two. Similarly, the number of levels for factor C is three.
T serves as the tolerance stackup constraint 共see Table 2兲 with
T WC computed using the WC model and T RSS using the RSS
model 共see Table 3兲. The cost is the response to be minimized.
Equation 共8兲 is used to compute the manufacturing cost for the
five dimensions in the assembly chain:
I
y⫽ 兺 c ⫽c
i⫽1
i A ⫹c D ⫹c C ⫹c E ⫹c B (8)
Table 2 shows the full 2 4 ⫻3 1 mixed design data for Example 1
with 48 runs 共no replicates兲. Three alternative optimal solutions
are found in Table 2:
关Solution 1兴 Run number 12 共y min⫽610, t A* ⫽t A2 ⫽4, t D * ⫽t D2
⫽3, t C* ⫽t C2 ⫽5, t E* ⫽t E1 ⫽2, t B* ⫽t B2 ⫽4, and the tolerance
stackup is t A ⫹t D ⫽t C ⫹t E ⫹t B ⫽18⭐18兲.
关Solution 2兴 Run number 14 共y min⫽610, t A* ⫽t A2 ⫽4, t D * ⫽t D1
⫽2, t C* ⫽t C2 ⫽5, t E* ⫽t E2 ⫽3, t B* ⫽t B2 ⫽4, and the tolerance
stackup is t A ⫹t D ⫹t C ⫹t E ⫹t B ⫽18⭐18兲.
关Solution 3兴 Run number 32 共y min⫽610, t A* ⫽t A2 ⫽4, t D * ⫽t D2
⫽3, t C* ⫽t C1 ⫽3, t E* ⫽t E1 ⫽3, t *S ⫽t B2 ⫽4, and the tolerance
stackup is t A ⫹t D ⫽t C ⫹t E ⫹t B ⫽17⭐18兲.
Solution 1 and 2 of Example 1 imply that one should order two
different types of bearings. Using one bearing type reduces the
inventory holding cost, the setup cost, and variation due to differ-
ent processes or suppliers used. For one bearing type a setup
constraint is imposed as t D ⫽t E . Similarly, it is not cost effective
to select two different types of manufacturing processes 共machine
tools兲 to produce dimensions A and B if the two similar compo-
nents can be produced on one machine. The setup constraint in
this case is t A ⫽t B . The design and data in Table 3 incorporate
setup constraints. The optimal solution with the WC constraint is
marked with*, while with the RSS constraint with**. The design
matrix in Table 3 includes those runs of Table 2 that satisfy the
two setup constraints. Therefore, the setup constraint should be
considered before the experiments are conducted, which will help
reduce the number of experimental runs. Selecting run number 32
as the optimal solution with the two setup constraints considered
corresponds to the following processes:
A ⫽t A2 ⫽4,
t* * ⫽t D2 ⫽3,
tD t C* ⫽t C1 ⫽3,
t E* ⫽t E2 ⫽3, t B* ⫽t B2 ⫽4,
with the tolerance stackup t A ⫹t D ⫹t C ⫹t E ⫹t B ⫽17⭐18, and cost
y min⫽610.
Example 2. For the data in Example 1, minimize the variation
of the assembly tolerance stackup with the DOE approach subject
to setup and cost constraints.
Table 4 shows the process capability data for the process alter-
natives provided in Fig. 3. The mean value ␮ C of each centered
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 Table 2

Table 3

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 process is zero. For the skewed process, the process mean ␮ S is Since
computed from Eq. 共1兲. As the data in Table 5 is obtained from
the Monte Carlo simulation based on the data in Table 4, the WC 1
␴ i⫽ t i (10)
constraint is used to compute the single side tolerance stackup of 3
a dimensional chain. Example 3 illustrates the DOE approach to
minimize the variation subject to RSS constraint. The variation of thus
manufacturing cost is not considered in order to simplify the I
1
analysis of variance for two reasons: 共1兲 in robust tolerance de-
sign, the sensitivity of tolerances 共rather than cost兲 to the process
␴ T2 ⫽
9 兺t
i⫽1
2
i (11)
variation should be reduced; 共2兲 assuming a constant manufactur-
ing cost for each dimension does not affect the variance of the In this example,
assembly tolerance stackup. Denoting T as the tolerance stackup, 1
the variance ␴ T2 of T is computed from Eq. 共9兲 ␴ T2 ⫽ 共 t A2 ⫹t D2 ⫹t C2 ⫹t E2 ⫹t B2 兲 (12)
9
I

␴ T2 ⫽ 兺␴
i⫽1
2
i (9)
The cost constraint is
I

兺 c ⭐Y
i⫽1
i (13)

The value of Y in Examples 2 and 3 is assumed to be 610. It

represents the minimum cost obtained in Example 1.
The first five replicates from 200 simulations of component
Table 4 tolerances for a centered and skewed process are presented in
Table 5. Table 6 shows the assembly tolerance stackup based on
the data provided in Table 5, where T s (T c ) is the tolerance
stackup for the centered 共skewed兲 process, and ␴ s ( ␴ c ) is the stan-
dard deviation for the centered 共skewed兲 process. The tolerance
stackup and standard deviation in Table 7 is obtained from 200
Monte Carlo simulations.
It is recognized that running a Monte Carlo simulation for a
large scale design problem is time and memory consuming. How-
ever, with today’s computer technology, the latter is less of an
issue. The increasing popularity of commercial software for sta-
tistical tolerance design 关38–40兴, Variation Simulation Analysis
or VSA 关41,38兴, tends to support this argument. In fact, VSA has

Table 5

Table 6

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 Table 7
been integrated into the most widely used CAD packages, such as
CATIA, Pro/Engineer, and UniGraphics 关41兴. The backbone of
VSA is Monte Carlo simulation 关38兴. However, in this research
Monte Carlo simulation plays only a supporting role. First of all,
we demonstrated that Monte Carlo simulation 共Example 2兲 pro-
vides comparable results to those of the DOE approach 共Example
1兲. Second, the role of Monte Carlo simulation in the proposed
DOE approach is to generate samples to serve as replicates 共Ex-
ample 2兲. The number of replicates is rather small, e.g., 5 to 10,
which is not a computing burden.
From Table 7, the optimal solution is run number 26, where y
⫽600⬍610, T C ⬍18, T S ⬍10, ␴ TCmin⫽2.26, and ␴ TS min⫽2.27. This
solution differs from the solution in Example 1, where ␴ TCmin de-
notes the minimum standard deviation of tolerance stackup for the
centered process, and ␴ TS min for the skewed process. The former
achieves a minimum variation design at a lower cost than the
latter 共600 vs. 610兲. If one wants to further reduce the variation,
the value of Y should be relaxed. The analysis of variance
共ANOVA兲 is an effective tool in identifying and reducing the
variation.
4 Analysis of Experiments
4.1 ANOVA for the Centered Process. Table 8 shows the
results of the analysis of variance for the simulated tolerance
stackup in Table 6. The effect of the process on dimensions A and
B in Table 6 is significant at 1 percent, which implies that the
variation of assembly processes for dimensions A and B should be
tightly controlled in order to cost effectively reduce the variation
of tolerance stackup of the shaft assembly.
4.2 ANOVA for the Skewed Process. Table 9 shows the
ANOVA results for the skewed process based on the simulated
data. The results in Table 9 indicate that the effect of factors A and
Table 8
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Table 9
B on the variation of tolerance stackup is significant at 5 percent
for the skewed process, which agrees with the conclusion from
Table 8 for the centered process.
5 Robust Synthesis of Tolerances with Minimum
Variation of Tolerances and Processes
5.1 Variation Reduction. The effectiveness of the DOE ap-
proach in reducing the variation of tolerances and processes is
discussed next. Consider run number 16 共see Table 1兲 the ‘‘as-is’’
design. Suppose that we want to reduce the variation in a cost
effective way. As indicated in Tables 8 and 9, tightening the
variation of dimensions A and B should be the most effective. To
see this, a variation reduction ratio 共VR兲 is constructed next based
on the data in Table 7
VR 共 l 1 ,l 2 兲 ⫽ 冏 冏
⌬␴
⌬y
(14)
where l 1 is the ‘‘as-is’’ run number, and l 2 is the ‘‘to be’’ run
number. For example, from run number 16 to 39 共by tightening
the variation of dimensions A and B兲 for the centered process, the
variation reduces from 2.82 to 2.22, while the cost increases from
600 to 640, i.e., VR(16,39)⫽0.6/40⫽0.015. While from run num-
ber 10 to 16 共by tightening the variation of factors D and E兲,
VR(16,10)⫽(2.82⫺2.69)/20⫽0.0065. Comparing the two ratios,
tightening the variation of dimensions A and B reduces the overall
variation 0.015/0.0065⫽2.31 times compared to tightening the
variation of dimensions D and E based on 99 percent confidence
interval. Similarly, for the skewed process, (VR(16,39)
⫽0.01775)/(VR(16,10)⫽0.006)⫽2.9583 based on 95 percent
confidence interval. Therefore, one should select run number 39 if
the cost is relaxed to 640 共see Table 7兲.
Example 3. In this example, deterministic data is considered
to obtain a set of processes with minimum variation subject to
RSS, setup, and cost constraints. Table 10 shows the experimental
design data, where the tolerance stackup T C is computed from the
left hand side of inequality 共7兲, cost from Eq. 共8兲, and ␴ T2 from Eq.
共9兲.
Table 11 includes the experimental design data for minimum
variation subject to setup and cost constraints for a skewed pro-
cess. The tolerance data in each entry of Table 11 is computed
from 共15兲, which in turn can be derived from Eq. 共1兲 for ␮ C ⫽0,
and T S is computed from Eq. 共16兲.
t S i ⫽1.5t i (15)
T S l ⫽1.5T l (16)
where: t S l denotes the 3␴ value with 1.5␴ process shift for dimen-
sion i in Table 11, T S l is the tolerance stackup with 1.5␴ process
shift for each process in Table 11, T l is the tolerance stackup with
centered processes in Table 10, and l denotes the run number.
AUGUST 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 525
 Table 10

Table 11

5.2 Discussion. The results in Table 10 and 11 concerned
with the RSS model based on the deterministic data support the
results in Table 7 from the Monte Carlo simulation to obtain the
tolerance stackup for the random data. The same optimal process
combination was selected in both cases. A question arises whether
to apply the Monte Carlo simulation approach to the random data
or to use the RSS model to the deterministic data to obtain a
tolerance stackup. For a large number of simulations, the results
obtained from the Monte Carlo simulation should be more precise
and realistic than those from applying the RSS model to the de-
terministic data. Furthermore, using the RSS model to the deter-
ministic data 共see Tables 10 and 11兲 provides more conservative
tolerance stackups for the centered process and especially for the
skewed process, than using the Monte Carlo simulation 共see Table
7兲. Running a large number of simulations for a large number of
dimensions is time consuming; however, it provides more realistic
solutions.
Zero defects vs. robust design. The zero defect design and ro-
bust quality design of tolerances are illustrated in Fig. 5. A con-
ventional three sigma design produces the variation shown in Fig.
5共a兲. This design scheme results in a large number of defects and
a significant variation. In zero defect design, the variation is not
significantly reduced 共see Fig. 5共b兲 and Taguchi and Clausing
关42兴兲. Two cases of the reduction of variation in six sigma design
are analyzed. One case assumes the functional tolerance can not
be modified, and one should select a suitable manufacturing pro-
cess. By selecting a process with six sigma value that is half of
each design tolerance, the variation of a component tolerance and
the assembly tolerance stackup is reduced. This approach is rather
costly. The other case assumes a fixed process capability. One
should select the full tolerance range of a component twice as
large as the six sigma value of the corresponding process. In the
latter case, only the number of defects is reduced while the varia-
tion remains unchanged.
In robust design, both the number of defects and the variation
are reduced 共see Fig. 5共c兲兲. Since the reduction is based on
ANOVA, the design tolerance is not evenly relaxed or the process
is not evenly tightened. The emphasis is on the critical processes,

Fig. 5 Comparison of tolerance design approaches: „a… Conventional toler-

ance design approach: many defects, large variation „b… Zero defect tolerance
design approach: zero defects, large variation „c… Robust tolerance design ap-
proach: zero defects, small variation

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 while the variation of a noncritical process is relaxed or the varia-
tion of a noncritical process is left unchanged, i.e., robust design
reduces the number of defects and variation at a lower cost 关43兴.
Concurrent design of products and processes vs. statistical pro-
cess control and inspection. As summarized in Ishikawa 关44兴,
quality assurance has evolved over three stages: inspection, pro-
cess quality control, including statistical process control, and pro-
cess and product improvement methods, e.g., robust design of
tolerances presented in this paper, which concurrently considers
products and processes. Inspection does not improve the built-in
quality of a product. Manufacturing process control reduces the
number of defects by using high cost equipment. However, robust
design of tolerances for minimum variation reduces the number of
defects and variation at the design stage. As reported in the litera-
ture, the design stage usually contributes about 10–20 percent to
the product cost, but it determines about 70–90 percent of the
product life-cycle cost 共pp. 138–141, Bedworth et al. 关45兴兲.
Setup constraints. A conventional model for tolerance synthe-
sis, e.g., Ostwald and Huang 关17,46兴, does not incorporate setup
constraints. In the absence of the setup constraint, a group of
dimensions or components might be assigned different manufac-
turing processes or suppliers, e.g., processes to produce caps A
and B in Fig. 3 共see Table 2兲. In addition to increasing the cost and
cycle time, the increased number of setups deteriorates tolerances
as the process reference 共datum兲 changes, while the design refer-
ence remains the same, which in turn may increase the number of
defects. Also increased number of setups 共processes or suppliers兲
leads to larger variation of products, which is against the current
industrial trend in supplier number reduction or single sourcing
widely practiced by the many lean and JIT manufacturers.
6 Conclusions
In this paper, robust synthesis of probabilistic tolerances with
the DOE approach was discussed. The WC RSS models and
Monte Carlo simulation were used to obtain assembly tolerance
stackups. Both skewed and centered processes were studied.
The benefits of using the DOE approach over exact algorithms
can be summarized as follows. 共1兲 DOE deals with nonlinear and
linear models, 共2兲 It provides more flexibility in handling uncer-
tainty in data input, while an exact algorithm usually requires
exact data as its input, 共3兲 Although an exact algorithm may pro-
vide optimal solution, however, we may not gain any insights of
the process knowledge. For example, if we want to reduce the
defect rate, then DOE may be used to determine the statistically
significant factors or interactions that impact the assembly varia-
tion. By doing so, we can tighten the control of the process with
significant impact on the assembly variation, and probably relax
the control for the process of noncritical dimensions. Therefore,
we can reduce the assembly variation more effectively in terms of
costs than if we would evenly tighten the control of each dimen-
sion.
Acknowledgment
This research has been partially funded by the Caterpillar Fel-
lowship and NSFC-59775084 from the National Natural Science
Foundation of China 共NSFC兲 awarded to C-X. Feng.
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