Geometry assurance
Learning from your mistakes and experience in order to manage geometric deviations and variations is an important competitive strength!
Swedish industry can become the best by taking into account the knowledge of how products and production systems interact to shorten production and introduction lead times for new products.
Physical products rarely turn out exactly as planned. There are always deviations in precision and variations as products do not turn out identical every time. Therefore, it is important to make our products as insensitive to manufacturing variations as possible in order to avoid problems or non-fulfilment of functional or aesthetic requirements. The demand for high quality in combination with increased flexibility and shorter lead times means that the need to "get it right from the start" has becoming ever greater. Components must fit together and fulfil set requirements from the start, without any adjustment or post processing. Methods and techniques for geometric assurance are in demand.
The term geometric assurance covers all the activities aimed at securing that geometric quality is met. Knowing how the product concept and manufacturing processes combine and understanding the origin of the variation are central to geometric assurance work. The opportunity to simulate and visualise variation and tolerance results as well as an efficient use of experience and data from previous solutions are important success factors for increased geometric quality. Robust concepts give a high quality end product, which pays for itself in the form of reduced costs for adjustments, rejections and complaints. Swerea IVF has many years of experience in research and development work as well as industrial adaptations of processes and techniques for geometry assurance as well as a wide network of contacts, both industrial and academic.
To consistently handle geometric variation for complex products in a computer based environment is an important cornerstone in using experience to reduce production and introduction lead times for new products in the industry. A virtual product and process development chain with big injections of knowledge and experience that have been successful in earlier products are a necessity for increasing competivity.
By streamlining processes for geometric assurance, the knowledge of how the product concept and production process interact is increased, allowing a higher quality end product to be achieved. The knowledge on applicable production conditions can be exploited to achieve improved design in the earlier concept phases, safer virtual preparation, quicker start-up and streamlined steering and adjustment of continuous production.