Formal computer-aided product family architecture design for mass customization

Abstract

With product customization companies aim at creating higher customer value and stronger economic benefits. The profitability of the offered variety relies on the quality of the developed product family architectures and their consistent implementation in configuration systems. Yet existing methods are informal, providing limited support for domain experts to communicate, synthesize and document architectures effectively. In single product design explicit visual models such as design structure matrices and node-link diagrams have been used in combination with structural analysis methods to overcome the limitation of the informal approach. Drawing on thereto established best practises, this paper evaluates and extends the relevant methods and modelling techniques, to create a consistent and formal approach for the design and customization of entire product families. To validate it's applicability, the approach is tested on a case study at a manufacturing company offering bespoke industrial applications. A generic modelling method termed the integrated design model (IDM) is developed and complemented with a computational structural analysis method, to assist domain experts in their daily work. When combined with a configuration system, the presented IDM tool automates the documentation and formalizes the synthesis of architectures, thereby making any decision about a preferred solution explicit and transparent.

Configuration platform for customisation of design, manufacturing and assembly processes of building façade systems: A building information modelling perspective

“…Product families contain variants of the products and their parts, components and configurations [51,52] in order to better meet the diverse needs of today's highly competitive global marketplace, to increase variety, shorten lead-times, and reduce costs [53,54]. One of the highly recommended solutions is configurators as specialised systems that support product customisation by describing how predefined entities (physical or nonphysical) and their properties (fixed or variable) can be combined [55,56]. Product configurators as an IT smart solution can help solve the challenges in product customisation in ETO strategies such as AEC industries.…”

Decision-Making Approach to Selecting Optimal Platform of Service Variants

“…In this context, Tseng and Piller [18] proposed a generic variety structure including also configuration constraints. Therefore, the right product or service composition and their component compatibility need to be ensured [19]. As service industry is intentionally becoming more complex, a key enabler to achieve this tailoring of services to consumer needs is the application of efficient computer-aided variation technologies [20].…”

An Innovative Framework for Managing the Customization of Tailor-made Shoes

“…For instance, Zhang et al (2010) proposed an integrated order fulfilment system to automatically execute order processing, configure products and process plans, and extract and share real-time data. Bonev et al (2015) presented a combination of informal and formal methods to design and support the mass customization of product family architectures. The design phase has been also examined by Song and Sakao (2017) who proposed a design framework dedicated to sustainable product/service systems.…”