Robust Engineering
In this work, the authors detail new approaches to manufacturing high-quality, low-cost products that can successfully compete in the global marketplace.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Robust Engineering
Chapter 7: Fuel Delivery System Robustness
FORD MOTOR COMPANY - USA
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
BACKGROUND
Excessive fuel returned from the combustion area back to the gas tank is no longer allowed because of air pollution. This phenomenon is called hot fuel handling. Because an excess of fuel is not allowed, there is a strong need to develop a fuel pump system which delivers accurate fuel flow.
Fuel flow is controlled by electronics. Electronic control is the future of the engineered system. For any manufacturing company, it is important to establish an effective product development strategy to develop a robust electronic control system.
The project team had three years to develop the new system. Since they progressed much even after one and half years, the project was started.
PROCESS
Instead of evaluating the fuel delivery system by testing it to find problems, a robust design approach was used. This approach evaluates the design by measuring the variability of the energy transformation of the system. It looks for design that has the least variability of energy transformation regardless of a customer's usage.
Instead of repeating the design-build-test cycle several times until the design is good enough, the robust design approach systematically optimizes the design by studying several design parameters simultaneously. The team spent most of the energy to discuss what should be measured and how it should be tested. It took several four-hour meetings to plan the testing.
Five design parameters were tested under two noise conditions which were generated by varying fuel type, fuel temperature and tank pressure,...
Copyright American Supplier Institute, Inc., Genichi Taguchi, Subir Chowdhury, Shin Taguch 2000 under license agreement with Books24x7
