In recent years, the air transport market has experienced strong growth, increasing the demand for new civil aircraft, challenging the actual production rate of aerospace industries. The bottleneck of the production for the aviation industry lies in the capability of the manufacturing and assembly facilities to fulfill the module arrangement in the current design. The development of optimized product architecture requires the implementation of design for assembly principles at the conceptual design phase closing the gap between the design and the production departments. The study proposes a Conceptual Design for Assembly (CDfA) methodology which aims at the assessment of aircraft systems installation and assembly at the early phase of product development (conceptual design). The CDfA methodology allows comparing assembly performance of different aircraft architectures identifying critical modules and interfaces as well as assembly/installation issues. The methodology is based on a specific framework (hierarchical structure) which is characterized by levels, domains, and attributes. Levels enable the analysis of product architectures at different levels of granularity, splitting the global analysis into sub-problems (problem discretization). Domains and attributes are defined with a knowledge-based engineering approach considering available information at the conceptual design phase and production criteria. A complex system (the nose fuselage of a commercial aircraft) was chosen as a case study to test the robustness of the methodology in relation to the assembly performance observed within the manufacturing facilities. Results revealed the architectural elements (modules and interfaces) that contribute to inefficient assembly operations, as well as the rationales enabling to elaborate alternative architectures for an improved product industrial efficiency.

近年来，航空运输市场增长强劲，对新型民用飞机的需求增加，对航空航天工业的实际生产速度提出了挑战。航空工业生产的瓶颈在于制造和装配设施能否满足当前设计中的模块布置。优化产品架构的开发需要实现装配设计概念设计阶段的原则缩小了设计和生产部门之间的差距。该研究提出了一种装配概念设计 (CDfA) 方法，旨在在产品开发的早期阶段（概念设计）评估飞机系统的安装和装配。CDfA 方法允许比较不同飞机架构的装配性能，识别关键模块和接口以及装配/安装问题。该方法基于一个特定的框架（层次结构），其特点是层次、领域和属性。级别支持以不同粒度级别分析产品架构，将全局分析拆分为子问题（问题离散化）。考虑概念设计阶段的可用信息和生产标准，使用基于知识的工程方法定义域和属性。选择了一个复杂系统（商用飞机的机头机身）作为案例研究，以测试该方法与在制造设施内观察到的装配性能相关的稳健性。结果揭示了导致装配操作效率低下的架构元素（模块和接口），以及能够制定替代架构以提高产品工业效率的基本原理。