An object-oriented approach to the concurrent engineering of electronics assemblies
An electronics assembly (EA) can be regarded as the backbone of electronic or electro-mechanical products, where its functions are implemented by combining components and their interconnections on a substrate plate. The design of EAs is relatively complex and encompasses the consideration of many diverse considerations. This paper is concerned with the central area of electronic assemblies component selection (EACS), and with considering constraints at this stage to avoid multiple repetitions of the design process. The main task is to take the requirements and constraints, together with a set of possible electronics components, and then to select a subset of these components to satisfy the requirements (functional, physical,...) and constraints, while minimizing or maximizing the objective function. The use of such EACS promises substantial benefits but its successful implementation is hampered by the lack of a suitable formalism, particularly where, as is often the case, participants are geographically separated. The work presented in this paper is focused on how to represent EACS, where the participants may be remote, and how to implement it in a formal and systematic way. A representation formalism is proposed for that purpose. This paper first overviews the EACS process. A formalism for EACS is then presented. An Internet network-based implementation of this formalism is described that uses the Internet to support EACS, and an example is used to illustrate the implementation. The main contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, the design domain of electronics assemblies is described. Second, a formalism for EACS is presented. Third, the use of this formalism is illustrated with an Internet-based implementation showing how the formalism can be used for a specific problem. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
object-oriented approach concurrent engineering electronics assembly design process