Ken Chase, Brigham Young University
Presented June 15, 2000 at the ADCATS 2000 Conference

Tolerance analysis of assemblies promotes concurrent engineering by bringing engineering requirements and manufacturing capabilities together in a common model.  By further integrating the engineering modeling and analysis with a CAD system, a practical tool for product and process development is created.  It provides a quantitative design tool for predicting the effects of manufacturing variation on performance and cost in a CAD-based design environment.  This presentation will be an overview of the contributions made by about 35 graduate students and many undergrads to the CATS technology for CAD-based variation analysis.

Bio BS, MS – BYU ’63,  PhD – Berkeley ‘72
Prof. Chase has taught mechanical engineering at the Brigham Young University since 1968.  An advocate of computer technology, he has served as a consultant to industry on numerous projects involving engineering software applications.  In 1984, he founded the ADCATS consortium for the development of CAD based tools for tolerance analysis of mechanical assemblies.  Over 35 sponsored graduate theses have been devoted to the development of the tolerance technology contained in the CATS software.  Several faculty and students are currently involved in a broad spectrum of research projects and industry case studies on statistical variation analysis.  Past and current sponsors include Allied Signal, Boeing, Cummins, United Defense, Ford, GE, HP, Hughes, IBM, Motorola, Sandia Labs, Sigmetrix, Texas Instruments, and the US Navy.