MULTIPLE QUALITY CRITERIA OPTIMIZATION IN REACTIVE IN-MOLD COATING WITH A DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS APPROACH II: A CASE WITH MORE THAN THREE PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Mauricio Cabrera-Ríos1, José M. Castro2,*, Clark A. Mount-Campbell3
1Postdoctoral
Researcher, Email address: cabrera-rios.1@osu.edu
2Professor, Email address: castro.38@osu.edu
3
Associate Professor, Email address: mount-campbell.1@osu.edu
Department of Industrial, Welding, and Systems
Engineering
The Ohio State University
210 Baker Systems, 1971 Neil Avenue
Tel.: 614-688-4173
Fax: 614-292-7852
Sheet Molding
Compound (SMC) is a widely utilized material to manufacture automotive exterior
body panels. Compression molded SMC parts are often coated with the objective
to provide additional surface properties, provide environmental protection,
and/or enhance aesthetics. One of the most rapidly increasing coating methods
is called In-Mold Coating (IMC) in which a liquid thermoset is injected onto
the surface of the cured SMC part while this is still in the mold. Cycle time,
dimensional consistency, and surface finish are among the most important
performance measures (PMs) to consider in the production of SMC due to their
impact in profit and quality, hence these measures are also important when
using IMC. Frequently, the PMs exhibit conflicting behavior i.e. lowering the
cycle time might imply decreasing the part surface quality and/or achieving a
lower overall part dimensional consistency. For this reason, one must exercise
especial care to identify the best compromises between the PMs along with the
processing conditions that result in these best compromises. The task of
finding the best compromises poses a multiple criteria optimization problem.
This paper describes an application of IMC to SMC where the multiple criteria
optimization problem is addressed with a non-parametric approach known as Data
Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The use of a graphical approach to identify the
best compromises is not possible in the case presented here because four PMs
have been included. This fact makes the use of the proposed approach completely
necessary to solve the problem at hand.