Overview and Classification

This chapter provides a brief overview of robust analysis/design and its integration with control for manufacturing. Robust performance is one of the most important concerns in the design of any system in the manufacturing industry. Wu and Rao (2004) integrated the interval analysis with fuzzy analysis to model the tolerances and clearances in mechanism analysis. The chapter investigates methods to account for uncertainty, to measure, evaluate, and design robustness for both static and dynamic systems, and to integrate design with control. The fundamental principle in robust design is to improve the quality of a product by minimizing the sensitivity of the performance to uncontrollable variations. A mixed-integer dynamic optimization (MIDO) is presented to solve the integration problem that involves discrete variables, disturbances, and parametric uncertainties. By reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the existing design methods, the research opportunities in this area is discussed.