A new design approach to serviceability using activity based costing, fuzzy logic and modular design

Abstract

This thesis presents a methodology to assist the product designer in calculating and reducing product life-cycle service costs during initial design stages. A simple and effective format has been devised to represent the product disassembly sequences in a hierarchical form. Activity Based Costing (ABC) has been used to calculate the part service costs. This costing technique supports the tracing of the service costs to the service characteristics of the respective parts. Two strategies have been explored for reducing the product service costs. The first technique grades all the parts according to their service requirements. The second technique involves combining the parts, having similar service requirements, into modules. Both techniques provide suggestions (possible design modifications) to decrease the product service costs. The modifications are evaluated for corresponding decrease in service cost to test their efficacy. Finally, the methodology is tested using two case study products to check its versatility.