Tolerance Specification Optimization for Economic and Ecological Sustainability

Abstract

In the final stages of product development, dimensional tolerances are specified by designers to ensure high functionality at low costs. A traditional approach to this decision-making process is to minimize economic losses to the manufacturer and the consumer. This paper presents a new approach for tolerance allocation optimization that considers sustainability not only from economic costs but also ecological costs. The framework is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem and explored with a case study on the design of an automotive body panel. Results of the case study include Pareto frontiers of non-dominated optimal solutions along with a parametric study to explore the influence of material choice on the results.