DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURE AND ASSEMBLY LEAN AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT THROUGH INDUSTRIAL CASE STUDY

Lean is a key process that understands customer value and its goal is to provide perfect value to the customer by engaging a process cycle that minimizes waste. This paper focuses on the implementation of Lean in the Design and Manufacturing Industries. The complex interactions of the financial, logistical, and geological processes that are involved in developing a product and then handing it over to customers are driving forces in today's industries. Hence, if industries do not implement Lean, product cost will rise. Lean design involves identifying wastage in the processes of product manufacturing/production. This means, specifically, eliminating waste and non-value-added activities in design, production, marketing, supply chain integration and customer interactions by making product flow through the Value Stream without any interruption. Our goal is to minimize production resources by eliminating non-value-added activities, thus saving time in production and improving product quality. The basic goal behind this paper is to reduce product cost by eliminating unnecessary elements that increase final product cost. This will be demonstrated by way of manufacturing a fuel tank by removing or redesigning the parts now used by the current industry. The paper also will show how Virtual Reality plays a key role in helping students and engineers to learn applications and to understand simulation more effectively. It is a powerful learning tool for both engineers and students. The paper will emphasize the development of active learning experiences in relation to Lean Product Development. The different models that are developed in this paper will help students and engineers to gain knowledge in various streams like Engineering, Business and Sciences, with the aid of Virtual Reality. This paper concentrates mainly on undergraduate and graduate students. Solid Works, one of the more common and available tools in most U.S. schools, is utilized as a software that allows users to change product designs on their own, so as to get better results. After learning these tools, users will be able to apply their skills in various industries to reduce non-value-added activities. Developing Lean Manufacturing models using Virtual Reality will increase any user's capability, quality and efficiency in Product Development.