Fuzzy-based analysis of process capability for assembly quality assessment in mechanical assemblies

Abstract

Process capability indices are useful tools for evaluating the ability of a process to produce products that meet certain specifications. The assembly quality is dependent on the distribution of variations of assembly dimensions, which is in turn dependent on mating conditions in the mechanical assembly. Since it is often difficult to measure the assembly dimensions in the production stages, they are not considered as a direct inspection objective. Rather, the inspection and evaluation of quality is carried out by specifying whether the assembly requirements satisfy the specified limits. Therefore, we can basethe process capability indices on the assembly dimensions. In most real life cases, the observations are fuzzy. In this paper, a novel method based on fuzzy concepts for process capability analysis of assembly dimensions in mechanical assemblies is presented. According to this scheme, sample observations of manufactured variables are described as fuzzy numbers. The proposed method is able to estimate the ability of the manufacturing process in satisfying the assembly quality in the mechanical assemblies with asymmetric tolerances which have non-normal distributions. In this paper, a proper criterion based on the probability of fuzzy set to interpret the computed fuzzy results is proposed, so these results are converted to the interpretable results for making a decision to evaluate the assembly quality. Furthermore, a new fuzzy-based quantity factor for expressing the percent contributions of effective manufacturing variables on the assembly quality is presented. The application of the presented method is demonstrated through an example and its results are discussed.

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