Axiomatic design of an adjustable lifting system for the assembly of booms of telehandlers

This work describes the Axiomatic Design of a lifting system to be used during the assembly of various telescopic lift booms. The main function of the lifting system is to assist the workers during both the pre-assembly of the individual parts of a boom and also during the final assembly of a wide ranges of telescopic booms of telehandlers. Prior to the design of the lifting system the fundamental phase of data collection work is described in the paper. The company production process is analysed to detect the needs and design constraints impacting directly on the design stage. The preliminary design stage included: functional, ergonomic study of the lifting system and also considerations on the safety of operators during assembly. The Axiomatic Design allows the designer to implement the Customer Needs into Functional Requirements and Design Parameters through a matrix description. So the product designer can recognize and properly transform Functional Requirements into Design Parameters during early stages of the design. In the paper the development of this new lifting system is shown through Axiomatic Design method. The resulting modular lifting system and the principal results obtained will be described in terms of: - reduction of assembly space on the “moving assembly chain” of the company, - reduction of cycle time of the assembly of the boom using the new lifting system, - improvement of ergonomic conditions of workers. During the so called decoupling phase of Axiomatic Design, the Design Parameters of the lifting system are first determined and then hierarchically ordered. So the wasted time for typical trial and error process of advanced design stage is reduced because of this clear ordering.