Customer/Supplier Relationship: reducing Uncertainties in Commercial Offers thanks to Readiness, Risk and Confidence Considerations

International Journal of Production Research

Ayachi

Vareilles

et al. 2020

At a time when modes of consumption are rapidly evolving, consumer attitudes and expectations are changing. Today, customers want more and more products and services that can be customised to their needs. Furthermore, they are more willing to pay for usage of a product rather than ownership. On the other hand, companies are adding more and more services to the products they are bringing to market in order to create added value and differentiate themselves from their competitors. To adapt to these new market trends, companies now have to offer their customers a more sophisticated catalog of solutions, in both product and services, including all conceivable combinations of the two. The aim of this article is to propose a generic knowledge-based model, dedicated to commercial offer configuration which is able to cope with the whole variety of solutions a company can deliver. To our knowledge, although some works on product configuration, service and product-service system configuration exist, none of them is generic enough to support product, service and product-service configuration at the same time when defining commercial offers. In this article, after giving a state-of-the-art assessment of product and service configurations, the need for a generic model able to cover the whole range and diversity of commercial offers is established, a knowledge-based model is defined and its relevance is demonstrated on seven use-cases coming from secondary and tertiary sector companies.

Section: Key Performance Indicators Of the Offermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Product⋎service system configuration: a generic knowledge-based model for commercial offers

International Journal of Production Research

Ayachi

Vareilles

et al. 2020

“…Depending on the system diversity and the customer's requirements, two kinds of industrial situations can be identified when elaborating the technical part or solution for the bid [7][8][9]. The first situation is Configure-To-Order (CTO) which is intrinsically linked to Assemble-To-Order (ATO) and Make-To-Order (MTO) situations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…), even if these requirements are near the limits of their technical solution catalogs. A real effort has to be made upstream to determine what technical solutions a company is able to produce to minimize the pre-design time while bidding and maximize the confidence of a company in the execution of its commitments in case of success [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Configuration knowledge modeling: How to extend configuration from assemble/make to order towards engineer to order for the bidding process

Sylla

Vareilles

et al. 2018

Computers in Industry

The bidding process is one of the most important phases for system contractors. A successful bid implies defining and implementing attractive and realistic systems solutions that fulfill customer expectations. An additional challenge arises with the increase in systems diversity resulting from growing customization needs. As a result, for standard customizing offers, bidders find good quality support with configuration software for assemble/make-to-order situations. But when requirements exceed the standard offers, bidders need extended support to fulfill Engineering-to-Order requirements. In this context, this article shows how configuration knowledge models, which support configuration in assemble/make-to-order situations (AMTO), can be extended and used in engineer-to-order situations (ETO). Modeling is achieved assuming that the configuration problem is considered as a constraint satisfaction problem. Six key requirements that differentiate ETO from AMTO are identified and modeling extensions are proposed and discussed. An example illustrates all the contributions.

“…In addition, the requirements on the performances, costs and delivery times of the systems are increasingly constrained. Therefore, in order to propose relevant systems solutions to the client companies, the supplier companies have to design customized systems in a very short period while optimizing time and resources involved in the design process [1], [2], [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Use Configuration Software in “Less Routine Design” Situations? Some Modelling Propositions

Sylla

2018 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM)

Monge

et al. 2018

This paper considers the configuration of physical systems in a business to business environment (machine tool, aerospace equipment, cranes …). In this kind of business, knowledge-based configuration software are frequently used when dealing with "infinitely routine design" situations where the entire customer's requirements can be fulfilled with standard systems. However, in "less routine design" situations where non-standard systems must be designed in order to fulfill the entire customers' requirements, existing knowledge-based configuration software cannot be used. In fact, the configuration hypothesis state that all configured systems are assembled from standard subsystems and components. The aim of this paper is therefore to investigate how the existing products/systems configuration hypothesis, problems' definitions, and models can be modified or adapted in order to allow the use of configuration software in "less routine design" situations. In this purpose, first, the main differences between standard and non-standards systems are analyzed. Then, six cases of systems configuration that differentiate "less routine design" from "infinitely routine design" are identified and discussed. Finally, some Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) based modeling extensions are proposed to allow the use of configuration software in these situations.