An Entropy-Based Formulation for Assessing the Complexity Level of a Mass Customization Industry 4.0 Environment

Abstract

It has been stated that Industry 4.0’s goal is, among others, the sustainable success in a market characterized by exigent and informed consumers demanding personalized products and services, where the level of manufacturing complexity increases with level of product customization. Even though different manufacturing complexity measures have been developed, there seems to be a lack of a comprehensive metric that address both the mass customization variety-induced complexity, and the complexity derived from the adoption of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. The main original contribution of this paper is the development of an entropy-based (entropic) formulation to address this last issue. Its validity and usefulness is put to the test via a discrete-event simulation study of a mass customization production system operating within an Industry 4.0 context. Our findings show that the entropic formulation acts as a fairly good trend indicator of the system’s performance parameter increase/decrease, but not as an estimator of the final values. A discussion of the managerial implications of the obtained results is offered at the end of the paper.

Towards the Development of a Digital Twin for a Sustainable Mass Customization 4.0 Environment: A Literature Review of Relevant Concepts

“…In turn, this demands one to address the issue of sustainable value creation, especially if this mass customization takes place within an Industry 4.0 context. These ideas are synthetized in the concept of Sustainable Mass Customization 4.0 (SMC4.0), introduced by [134]. In general, SMC4.0 refers to the use of a re-configurable CPS as the basis of a mass customization production system, where the idea is to take advantage of the manufacturing efficiency of the smart manufacturing transformation processes to achieve the desired levels of sustainability.…”

“…Table 3 presents the manufacturing routes of three hypothetical products presented in [134], namely A, B, and C. Figure 5 presents the manufacturing route of Product A when using a traditional strategy (left side) and a flexible strategy (right side). In the case of the traditional strategy, each machine type performs only one type of transformation process, so there are as many machine type changes as required types of transformation process.…”

Integration of the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) and Modular Function Deployment (MFD) methods applied to mass customization aiming product modularization: a case study on heavy vehicle suspension

“…According to classification of Martin( [39], [4]), the interface relationship type are: Controlled/Communication (C); Environment (E); Field (F); Fixation (A); Space (S); Transfer (T). More than one interface relationship is possible, Fig.…”

“…Acting this way, the variety of their products and components tends to increase continuously. For this reason, these companies must operate flexibly to satisfy market demands and management of the complexity generated by mass customization production ( [1]; [2]; [3]; [4]).…”

Integration of Additive Manufacturing, Parametric Design, and Optimization of Parts Obtained by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). A Methodological Approach

“…Mass customization, as a concept, is in a process of continuous revision and evolution, from a system based on modular elements to a system based on the co-design of products by consumers [ 73 , 79 , 83 , 84 , 85 ], so companies need new studies, methods, and tools to create personalized products with the costs and mass production efficiency.…”