Optimizing Locator Position to Maximize Robustness in Critical Product Dimensions

The way parts are located in relation to each other or in fixtures is critical for how geometrical variation will propagate and cause variation in critical product dimensions. Therefore, more emphasis should be put on this activity in early design phases in order to avoid assembly and production problems later on. In earlier literature, locator positions have been defined using optimization to reach a robust locating scheme. This implies that the total robustness of a part is optimized by placing the locators in an optimal way. Sometimes there are areas on parts that are more sensitive to variation than others. Therefore, this paper suggests an approach for optimizing the positions of locators in a locating scheme to maximize robustness in defined critical dimensions. A formulation of an optimization problem is presented, and an algorithm solving this in a heuristic approach is developed. Finally, this algorithm is applied on an industrial example.