Set-Based Concurrent Engineering for Preserving Design Bandwidth in Product and Manufacturing System Platforms

Abstract

Assembling products to order or applying straightforward configuration, such as scaling, allow the reuse of ready-designed physical components in high volumes. However, not all companies can exploit economies of scale in this way. They are burdened with additional design work, as requirements on functionality and performance differ among product variants or change over time. Such companies need artifact models and engineering processes that help them manage and develop for variety. Set-based concurrent engineering has been proposed for dealing with a variety of concepts during development that lead to a single product while storing knowledge gained. This paper adapts this thinking to the preparation and use of product and manufacturing system platforms. Here, the output is not a single product. Rather, a set of design solutions for products and manufacturing systems is designed that delivers flexibility in functionality and performance. In this paper, we call this built-in flexibility design bandwidth. The paper builds on an integrated artifact model for products and manufacturing systems. The model captures the rationale behind existing designs with their functionality. Here it is combined with principles of set-based concurrent engineering to outline a process for its preparation and use in cases of insufficient bandwidth that require additional designing. The preparation and use are illustrated by applying the model to an example where bandwidth is expanded and preserved.

A two-stage model of adaptable product platform for engineering-to-order configuration design

“…Michaelis, Levandowski, and Johannesson (2013) propose a process for how to create such a platform, which could be applied in this case too. Yet the real application of such process remains to be investigated.…”

“…This combined design bandwidth describes the validity and applicability range of a configurable component (CC) (Levandowski, Michaelis, and Johannesson 2014a). The concept is elaborated in Michaelis, Levandowski, and Johannesson (2013) where trade-off curves are used to represent the bandwidth of a platform.…”

“…However, to remain competitive over time, the platform needs to be maintained to incorporate new customer requirement, possibly expanding the bandwidth. Michaelis, Levandowski, and Johannesson (2013) propose a process and model for managing change in platforms, which builds upon functional modelling at early stages.…”

Set-based design: a review and new directions

“…This can be explained by a desire to explore and formalize Toyota's practice of SBCE as described by the foundational literature on SBCE (Ward et al 1994;Sobek 1996b). The majority ( 60%) of the publications in category 5 advocate exploring the design space, generating solutions and learning either by using computational tools (design grammars, parametric design, catalogue design and mechanical compilers) (Nahm & Ishikawa 2006a phases (Ward et al 1994(Ward et al , 1995Liker et al 1996;Sobek 1996a,b;Sobek et al 1999;Khan et al 2011;Raudberget 2011;Al-Ashaab et al 2013;Levandowski et al 2013;Michaelis et al 2013;Levandowski et al 2014;Al-Ashaab et al 2016;Araci et al 2016).…”

“…From a product platform design standpoint, modularity, architecture design and the configurable product space (bandwidth) are also advocated within the SBCE literature, as valid means to explore the design space and generate viable alternative designs (Levandowski et al 2013(Levandowski et al , 2014(Levandowski et al , 2016Michaelis et al 2013;Raudberget et al 2014). The CC framework and Enhanced Function Means (E-FM) modelling by Johannesson & Claesson (2005) are used there as the backbone to enable the approach during the product platform design.…”