Assembly Configuration Spaces - C-Infinity - Sai Nelaturi

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC, October 29-30, 2025https://cdfam.com/nyc-2025/

Organization:

C-Infinity

Presenter:

Sai Nelaturi

Assembly Configuration Spaces

Presentation Abstract

All non-trivial hardware products are assembled. They are also designed and manufactured in multiple configurations to serve diverse customer needs. Product designs define a configuration space of options that can be instantiated into variants per customer order. OEMs seek to maximize reuse of subassemblies across this space to balance flexibility with cost efficiency—especially in high-mix, low-volume manufacturing.

The challenge is translating a product’s design structure into its assembly process structure: reframing design intent as a sequence of operations executed on the factory floor. In Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) terms, this is the translation from the Engineering Bill of Materials (EBOM, “as-designed”) to the Manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBOM, “as-planned”). EBOM and MBOM are not separate domains, but dual representations of the same configuration. Today this translation is manual and painful.

At C-Infinity we are automating this translation and building assembly configuration spaces as a foundation for product design and manufacturing planning. By treating EBOM and MBOM as dual views of one structured space, we strengthen reuse, change propagation, streamline configuration management, and enable tighter digital-to-physical integration—addressing long-standing challenges at the heart of advanced manufacturing competitiveness.

Speaker Bio

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, UW-Madison. Expert in CAD, AI, and Digital Manufacturing. Former R&D Director at Carbon and PARC. DARPA and UW career award recipient.

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