Manufacturing fixation in design: Measurement and mitigation strategies for its impact on additive manufacturing use
Open Access
- Author:
- Brennan, Jennifer Bracken
- Graduate Program:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 22, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Nicholas Meisel, Outside Unit & Field Member
Timothy Simpson, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Chris McComb, Major Field Member
Kathryn Jablokow, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Daniel Haworth, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies - Keywords:
- Design for manufacturing
additive manufacturing
DfAM
Design for additive manufacturing
part identification for additive manufacturing - Abstract:
- Now that advanced manufacturing, with its unique capabilities and constraints, has appeared in industry, companies who continue employing only traditional methods of manufacturing are leaving money, time, design performance, or some combination of the three on the table by excluding the latest technology in manufacturing. However, mindsets of people have not changed as rapidly as manufacturing technology has evolved recently, and the people designing for advanced manufacturing are as important to its success as the technology is itself. To address this challenge, the evolution of manufacturing technology needs to be paired with an equivalent evolution in design mindset. There are new design benefits and constraints associated with advanced manufacturing technology. Changing the design approach of engineers and designers involves not only educating them about new advanced manufacturing technologies, but also addressing their reliance on traditional methods of production during design, even if it is unconscious. This phenomenon of designers’ blind adherence to design strategies for more traditional manufacturing technology has striking parallels with Jansson and Smith’s notion of design fixation, and this idea will be explored as a subset of design fixation in this dissertation. Specifically, the phenomenon explored in this research is referred to as manufacturing fixation in design (MFD) and is initially defined as “blind adherence to a limited set of manufacturing processes and/or constraints during the design process”. This definition parallels that of design fixation, which is defined as “blind, and sometimes counterproductive, adherence to a limited set of ideas in the design process”. In design fixation, people fixate on design features, or in the case of MFD, people limit themselves by fixating on specific manufacturing processes and the associated constraints and capabilities. In this dissertation, experimental studies are conducted to (i) confirm that MFD exists, (ii) explore ways to measure its impact, and (iii) elucidate ways to mitigate MFD at different levels. The impact of this work on the research and design community are also addressed, and next steps for research about MFD are proposed. The research was completed within the context of additive manufacturing (AM), which is a rapidly growing advanced manufacturing technology with unique constraints and benefits for design.