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Reconfiguring product development process in auto industries for mass customisation
Abstract
Mass customisation is today's reality in global business environment. Manufacturing firms are now in tremendous pressure to produce custom-built products/services to stay in global completion. The principle of mass customisation lies in maximising the correlations among manufacturer's technical capabilities to target market niches and in a timely manner to meet diverse customers' needs. To capture the target market niches, manufacturers need to concentrate on appropriate developmental technologies to keep production costs low, quality high and quick response. Nowadays customers' desires are to have their products quicker than before and placing an order in most convenient ways. This paper demonstrates how both product and production configuration system can be applied in global auto industries for placing an order to customised products more conveniently and efficiently. A case example from Volvo company trucks configurator is provided, which allows the integration of citarasa configurator to the basic product and production configuration system.
... (…) Al aceptar este enfoque, las empresas pueden aprovechar la ventaja de construir productos o servicios personalizados de manera más fácil y económica. [56] La adopción del principio de modularización es un requisito esencial para satisfacer la flexibilidad de personalizar productos o servicios. Se refiere a una nueva estrategia de desarrollo de productos en la que diferentes interfaces comparten entre los componentes para desarrollar un producto final. ...
... Se refiere a una nueva estrategia de desarrollo de productos en la que diferentes interfaces comparten entre los componentes para desarrollar un producto final. [56] ...
(Trabajo Final de Máster - Máster en Ingeniería de Diseño de Producto)
El proyecto comienza con el planteamiento del tema a estudiar, lo que supone marcar los objetivos del trabajo y establecer una metodología que permita alcanzarlos con una serie de resultados finales de calidad. Con la planificación ya definida, se procede a realizar una búsqueda bibliográfica que permita hacer un review del tema y conocer cuál ha sido su evolución en el tiempo y cuál es su estado actual. Esta revisión comienza con un resumen esquemático de lo que se quiere encontrar y termina con una serie de tesis, artículos y noticias actuales de interés global sobre el tema. Esta serie de documentos encontrados serán la base sobre la que se definirá el estado del arte del diseño modular en las fases posteriores, las cuales se centran en tres preguntas claves: ¿Qué es el diseño modular?, ¿Cómo se aplica? y ¿Quién lo aplica?. La primera fase (¿Qué es el diseño modular?) empieza aportando una definición de diseño modular a través de las definiciones de varios autores. Además, con estas definiciones y la lectura realizada se decide redactar también una serie de características que lo definan. Luego, se hace lo propio con términos estrechamente relacionados como modularidad, arquitectura de producto y plataforma de producto, recopilando también una serie de definiciones de cada uno según diversos autores. En esta fase también se decide estudiar el contexto en el que se sitúa actualmente el diseño modular, hablando así de los sectores en los que se aplica y el modelo económico hacia el que se está evolucionando actualmente: la Economía Circular. Para concluir esta fase, se redactan una serie de ventajas y debilidades sobre el diseño modular. La siguiente fase (¿Cómo se aplica?) tiene como finalidad hacer un estudio de los métodos que existen actualmente sobre diseño modular, por lo que esta fase se divide en tres apartados: métodos actuales, métodos en desarrollo y teorías, este último correspondería al estudio de ámbitos que podrían dar lugar a nuevas metodologías en el futuro. De cada uno se citan las correspondientes metodologías, sus autores, fecha de creación y descripción de su funcionamiento. La última fase que describe el estado del arte (¿Quién lo aplica?) se centra en el estudio de casos reales en los que se ha aplicado el diseño modular en alguna de sus fases del ciclo de vida. Esta fase hace un recuento tanto de los casos documentados como de casos recientes con el fin de conocer cómo se ha aplicado el diseño modular en un contexto real. Finalmente, se hace un análisis de los sectores de aplicación para conocer en cuáles se ha aplicado con mayor y menor frecuencia y en cuáles se podría llegar a aplicar potencialmente. Con esto, se da por concluido el estado del arte, dando lugar así a la obtención de una serie de conclusiones tanto de otros autores como propias de este proyecto. El trabajo finaliza con la descripción de tres posibles líneas de investigación futuras centradas en: la sostenibilidad, la evolución de los métodos actuales y la industria 4.0.
... Determining architecture patterns or signatures and their implications [56,57] Assessing the strategic and economic implications of product architecture [57,58,60,339,[352][353][354][355][356] Using modularity to inform design evolution [55,[59][60][61][357][358][359] Using modularity to inform outsourcing and partnering decisions [49,62,360] Segmenting portfolios [63] Designing for variety, component commonality/reuse, and product platforms/families [38, 39, 44, 64-68, 305, 361-368] Designing for adaptability/flexibility/changeability (often via modularity, real options) [22,43,68,69,304,338,[369][370][371][372][373][374][375] Determination and use of design rules in product design [26,28,58,70,71,376,377] Using design rules and options for mass customization [378][379][380] Standardizing and managing interfaces [57,70,376,381] Designing for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) [382] Designing for sustainability and the environment [316] Synthesizing with other design methods and tools such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Axiomatic Design, and the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) [67,257,356,361,[383][384][385][386][387] Decomposing and optimizing design problems [72,73] Supporting multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) [74][75][76]388] Exploring the conceptual design space [308,383] Managing product knowledge [78] Analyzing product usability [389] Supporting reverse engineering [22,40,390] Integrating systems and infusing new technologies [350,387,391] Analyzing system integration and testing [392] Allocating resources to product modules [393] Industry Instances Selected References research could demonstrate the power of, and explore approaches to formalizing, design rules for hardware products. Additional studies of architecture evolution from a longitudinal perspective would also be helpful. ...
The design structure matrix (DSM), also called the dependency structure matrix, has become a widely used modeling framework across many areas of research and practice. The DSM brings advantages of simplicity and conciseness in representation, and, supported by appropriate analysis, can also highlight important patterns in system architectures (design structures), such as modules and cycles. A literature review in 2001 cited about 100 DSM papers; there have been over 1000 since. Thus, it is useful to survey the latest DSM extensions and innovations to help consolidate progress and identify promising opportunities for further research. This paper surveys the DSM literature, primarily from archival journals, and organizes the developments pertaining to building, displaying, analyzing, and applying product, process, and organization DSMs. It then addresses DSM applications in other domains, as well as recent developments with domain mapping matrices (DMMs) and multidomain matrices (MDMs). Overall, DSM methods are becoming more mainstream, especially in the areas of engineering design, engineering management, management/organization science, and systems engineering. Despite significant research contributions, however, DSM awareness seems to be spreading more slowly in the realm of project management.
... They prefer tailor made products or services with faster delivery, lower cost and higher quality. To cope with these market demands, companies are moving forwards to adopt the strategy of mass customisation (Shamsuzzoha and Helo, 2009). It means that customers can choose the product features, order and configure their products in order to meet their specific needs and aspirations. ...
Nowadays global auto industries are implementing considerable
changes in their production lines, which lead to increased competition and
shorter product life cycles. Producing a variety of products with higher quality
and less cost could ensure more customer satisfaction. All automotive
industries especially car manufacturers are required to increase their market
segment with corporate profit to ensure cost related objectives and success over
competitors. It is therefore essential for auto firms to reconsider their product
development methodology in order to fulfil the objectives. The focus of this
paper is to investigate the pros and cons of the concept of modularity that can
be applied in auto industries in order to improve the product development
processes. Modularity is gaining increasing importance in manufacturing firms
recently; especially in auto industries. Modular product structures ensure real
improvements and provide considerable benefits for the business firms such as
reduced time to market, increased product variants, improved product quality,
reduced Bill-Of-Material code etc. However, the concept of modularity has
some limitations too. In this paper, a general overview of modularity, its
application and prospects in auto industries along with its limitations are
discussed.
... Product modularity permits the development of loosely coupled modules that can be rearranged with a view to bringing various configuration possibilities to the end customers (Shamsuzzoha and Helo, 2009). This in turn enables interchangeability among different configurations without compromising product integrity (Orton and Weick, 1990;Sanchez and Mahoney, 1996;Bask et al., 2010;Shamsuzzoha et al., 2010). ...
Purpose - Purpose ? The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate modularity degree in terms of interfaces and innovation.
Design/methodology/approach - The research objective is achieved through a modeling approach for deciding modular architecture and its implementation regarding unique components and product innovation. A case example is presented to elaborate on the concept of modularity degree and provide an option for choosing the best module from different alternatives.
Findings - The presented approach can be considered a product design strategy in which loose coupling is achieved through standardized component interfaces. Loosely coupled component interfacing is a prerequisite for developing mass customized products. There needs to be a decision support system to formulate the interfacing in order to achieve maximum benefits. This is illustrated in this paper.
Research limitations/implications - The modeling strategy for measuring the modularity level is formulated theoretically. This approach needs to be validated through an empirical study in order to generalize its findings.
Practical implications - In the industrial arena, there is a research gap in identifying and measuring the modularity level, which is formulated in the presented approach. It is hoped that this approach will contribute to filling this research gap in the business environment, which would further benefit managers of firms in their corresponding production processes.
Originality/value - The unique contribution of this modeling approach is articulated through analyzing product architecture with a view to interpreting the component interfaces in a more productive way. This formulation triggers the decision making process in complex product development processes.
... In product modularity there is a common understanding that modules as building blocks can be combined to offer a comparatively large number of product configurations (Baldwin and Clark, 1999; Garud and Kumaraswamy, 1995; Sanchez, 1995). Product modularity permits the development of loosely coupled modules that can be rearranged with a view to bringing various configuration possibilities to the end customers (Shamsuzzoha and Helo, 2009). This in turn enables interchangeability among different configurations without compromising product integrity (Orton and Weick, 1990; Sanchez and Mahoney, 1996; Bask et al., 2010; Shamsuzzoha et al., 2010). ...
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to investigate the importance of information management in modular product architecture for customized product development.
Design/methodology/approach
The objective of this research is to analyze product architecture in terms of information exchange and show its influence in product customization. A case study is presented with a view to modelling the information tracking necessary for product architecture and customization.
Findings
In today's volatile business environment, appropriate ways of information management could be an added value for manufacturing firms. This paper deals with the importance of information flow in product architecture. The role of information exchange influences the basic architecture of the product development process, which also affects the general theme of product customization.
Research limitations/implications
The importance of information flow highlights the design architecture and brings flexibilities to the product development process. This concept is illustrated through a single case example, which may not be translated as a generic output. Multiple case study approaches could be undertaken in future research to rigorously analyze the influence of information exchange on product architecture.
Practical implications
In order to comply with growing customization, firms are looking for flexible design architecture in their product development process. The presented approach will be beneficial for designers and organizational managers in developing flexible customized product or services.
Originality/value
This paper implements a unique approach to modular product architecture through information dependencies among components and sub‐assemblies. The basic principle of modular product architecture and how it affects product customization are also reported.
... They prefer tailor made products or services with faster delivery, lower cost and higher quality. To cope with these market demands, companies are moving forwards to adopt the strategy of mass customisation (Shamsuzzoha and Helo, 2009). It means that customers can choose the product features, order and configure their products in order to meet their specific needs and aspirations. ...
The objective of this paper is to introduce a methodological approach with the view to elaborate the concept of configuration process applicable to develop customised product. This preliminary configuration process will lead to offer true customer value and achieve superior competitive advantage. In this research, an information and communication technologybased configuration system is presented that might contribute to reduce product development lead time and faster sales-delivery process. It is believed that the illustrated configuration framework will bridge the gap between the manufacturers and customers to develop customer-satisfied product variants that consequently fulfil business target in terms of earning more revenues. The configuration framework as outlines in this research contributes to both product design and manufacturing perspectives and supports manufacturing firms for achieving product customisation strategy in upstream and downstream of developmental phases. The proposed framework is also validated by implementing the concept within a case company's demo configuration system. This paper is concluded after defining the research limitations and identifying future research potentials.
The design structure matrix (DSM) is a powerful tool for visualizing, analyzing, innovating, and improving systems, including product architectures, organizational structures, and process flows.
Akin to a traditional N2 chart and the System‐System matrix (SV‐3) in the DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF), the DSM is a square matrix showing relationships between system elements. These elements can be product components, teams, activities, etc. By analyzing the DSM, one can prescribe a better (e.g., more modular) system architecture or organization. Adding a time‐basis enables one to prescribe a faster, lower‐risk process. Because the DSM highlights process feedbacks, it helps identify iterations and rework loops—key drivers of cost and schedule risk.
The DSM is concise, visually appealing, and used in many organizations across diverse industries. Users have found DSM extremely useful for fostering architectural innovation and enabling the situation awareness and empowerment that motivates the people executing complex processes. This tutorial introduces the DSM and three distinctive applications useful to product developers, systems engineers, and project and program managers. Real‐life examples are presented from the aerospace, automotive, semiconductor, and other industries. Participants will engage in hands‐on exercises (building DSM models) and come away with a clearer understanding of the drivers of critical, emergent behaviors in systems. The methods can be applied immediately to projects for quick results and insights.
Due to the absence of agile characteristics, many traditional products have been struggling to face the onslaught of intensive competition. Agile characteristics would enable a product to be reconfigured quickly in response to the customers' dynamic demands. One of the theoretical propositions is that, computer-aided design (CAD)/computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technology possesses the capabilities to infuse agile characteristics in the traditional products. To examine this theoretical proposition, the research work being reported in this paper was carried out. During this research, the pump was chosen as a candidate of traditional product. The impeller and casing of the pump were subsequently modelled using CAD technology and design equations. Subsequently, four impeller and casing models were evolved. To examine the manufacturing aspect of these models, CAM technology was used. This research outcome indicated the feasibility of converting a traditional product into an agile compatible product using CAD/CAM technology.
Introduction 1 The Customer Centric Enterprise ................................................ 3 Mitchell M. Tseng and Frank T. Piller Part II: Mass Customization and Personalization ........................................ 17 Key Strategies for Customer Centric Enterprises 2 Examination of Mass Customization Through Field Evidence............................................................................... 19 Bart MacCarthy, Philip G. Brabazon and Johanna Bramham 3 The Many Faces of Personalization ............................................ 35 An integrative economic overview of mass customization and personalization Kai Riemer and Carsten Totz 4 Economic Evaluation of Mini-Plants for Mass Customization ..................................................................... 51 A decentralized setting of customer-centric production units Ralf Reichwald, Frank T. Piller, Stephan Jaeger and Stefan Zanner 5 Customer Driven Manufacturing Versus Mass Customization ...........
American Power Conversion (APC), a company in the electronics industry, has used the principles of mass customisation to achieve major improvements in its efficiency and performance. APC sells, designs, produces, delivers, and installs large complex infrastructure systems for data centres, and components for these systems. At the heart of its mass customisation strategy are a module-based product range and the use of product configuration systems for sales and order processing. In addition, the company has implemented a manufacturing concept, which involves the mass production of standard components in the Far East, and customer order-based final assembly based on customer orders at various production sites around the world within close customer proximity. The results of applying mass customisation principles include a reduction of the overall delivery time for a complete system from around 400 to 16 days. Also, production costs were significantly reduced. At the same time, the company's capability for introducing new products has increased.
The paper provides an integrated view of value creation in mass customization-based production models. While flexible manufacturing technologies are often seen as the main enabler of mass customization, we argue that modern information technologies play a similar important role. Their significance is based on enabling a distinctive principle of mass customization efficiently: customer integration into the production processes. The customer is integrated into value creation during the course of configuration, product specification and co-design. Customer integration is often seen as a necessity and source of additional costs of customization. However, we argue in this paper that customer integration may also be an important asset to increase efficiency and could pave the way for a new set of cost-saving potentials. We coin the term ‘economies of integration’ to sum up these saving potentials. Economies of integration arise from three sources: (1) from postponing some activities until an order is placed, (2) from more precise information about market demands and (3) from the ability to increase loyalty by directly interacting with each customer. By examining and structuring the economic principles of mass customization the paper will give insights into the benefits, but also the constraints of a mass customization strategy.
In regard to global competition, integrated manufacturing and service systems has emerged as a new manufacturing paradigm to assist manufacturers in achieving faster design, manufacturing and delivery of customer-specified products at low costs. The linchpin of realizing an economy of scale in production in such systems lies in routings to be adopted to produce product variety. This paper thus proposes a concept of production configuration as a means for manufacturers to obtain the set of optimal and similar routings for families of customized products. In turn the economy of scale in production can be achieved through production activity repetition and manufacturing resources reuse. Production configuration has been applied to the high variety production of vibration motors in a local electronics company. The preliminary results show the potential of production configuration for the quick and low cost product fulfillment for integrated manufacturing and service.
We study competition between two multi-product firms with distinct production technologies in a market where customers have heterogeneous preferences on a single taste attribute. The mass customizer (MC) has a perfectly flexible production technology, thus can offer any variety within a product space, represented by Hotelling's (1929) linear city. The mass producer (MP) has a more focused production technology, and therefore, it offers a finite set of products in the same space. MP can invest in more flexible technology, which reduces its cost of variety and hence allows it to offer a larger set of products; in the extreme,MP can emulate MC's technology and offer infinite variety. The firms simultaneously decide whether to enter the market, and MP chooses its degree of product-mix flexibility upon entry. Next, MP designs its product line, i.e., the number and position of its products; MC's perfectly flexible technology makes this unnecessary. Finally, both firms simultaneously set prices. We analyze the sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium in this three-stage game, allowing firm-specific fixed and variable costs that together characterize their production technology. We find that an MP facing competition from an MC offers lower product variety compared to an MP monopolist, in order to reduce the intensity of price competition. We also find that MP can survive this competition even if it has higher fixed cost of production technology or higher marginal cost of production or both.
To stay competitive, many manufacturers have to adapt their business models to mass customisation, which enables customers to order customised products tailored to their specific needs. One of the key enabling technologies for the successful implementation of mass customisation is the product configurator, a software tool that automatically generates the customised product designs based on the customer requirements and design constraints. A constraint-based product configurator has advantages of flexibility and generality in product modelling and problem solving. Its ability to deal with discrete constraints has been well studied. However, the requirement for handling numeric constraints expressed as mathematical formulas posts a new challenge. This paper proposes a constraint model for n-ary numeric constraints and effective search algorithms. It also presents a system design approach on modelling domain-specific product knowledge, integrating the domain-specific product models into generic search algorithms and presenting configuration results to the end users.
Today's economic climate characterised by increasing competition and structural turbulence will require a higher combined level of productivity and quality than has been the case in the past. This paper has demonstrated the interlinkages among quality and productivity, and for this purpose, similarities of the two important concepts have been reviewed. Major quality factors, which are the possible sources for poor/high productivity have been introduced, and finally, some advanced models have been presented and developed in which, the direct and indirect relationships between quality and productivity are addressed. This study has also highlighted the fact that improving quality plays a fundamental role in increasing operations productivity in organisations.
Mass customisation denotes the ability to provide customised products and services at a comparable price and speed of equivalent standard offerings. Management literature has suggested that the advent of mass customisation compels firms towards greater collaboration in the supply chain (Berman, 2002; Feitzinger and Lee, 1997; Da Silveira et al., 2001). However, evidence supporting this proposition remains anecdotal. This study seeks to develop and test a model that addresses the question: what are the benefits of buyer–supplier collaboration within the context of mass customisation? The study indicates that buyer–supplier collaboration may have significant effects on the focal firm's flexibility, responsiveness and modularisation capabilities, three capabilities shown to be critical to mass customisation. The results provide empirical support for the original proposition and have important implications for 'mass customised' supply chains.
Systems design involves the determination of interdependent variables. Thus the precedence ordering for the tasks of determining these variables involves circuits. Circuits require planning decisions about how to iterate and where to use estimates. Conventional planning techniques, such as critical path, do not deal with these problems. Techniques are shown which acknowledge these circuits in the design of systems. These techniques can be used to develop an effective engineering plan, showing where estimates are to be used, how design iterations and reviews are handled, and how information flows during the design work. This information flow can be used to determine the consequences of a change in any variable on the rest of the variables in the system, and thus which engineers must be informed and which documents must be changed. From this, a critical path schedule can be developed for implementing the change. This method is ideally suited to an automated design office where data, computer input and output, and communications are all handled through the use of computer terminals and data bases. However, these same techniques can also be effectively used in classical engineering environments.
This study explores New Product Development (NPD) performance from the viewpoint of the social capital theory. Interaction, perspective taking, and trust were treated as three antecedent variables in accordance with the three (structural, cognitive, and relational) dimensions of social capital. In the research frame, cross-functional collaboration was used as a mediating variable between the antecedent variables and NPD performance. The results show that both trust and perspective taking have significant impacts on cross-functional collaboration, and that cross-functional collaboration has a significant impact on NPD performance. The results, however, show no significant effect of interaction on collaboration, and this may imply that merely creating opportunity for interaction is not enough for collaboration to emerge.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate four of Alderson's key concepts to show how they explain mass customization and extend traditional consumer goods classifications. The four concepts are: heterogeneous markets, transvections, the principle of postponement, and routinized transactions.
Design/methodology/approach
In this exploratory paper, Alderson's main concepts are compared and contrasted with today's marketing phenomena and are used for updating traditional consumer goods categorizations.
Findings
The main concepts of Aldersonian theory discussed in the paper – heterogeneous markets, transvections, postponement and routinized transactions – are a remarkably good fit with today's “mass customization” and logically lead to an enhanced of definition of consumer goods classifications.
Research limitations/implications
This is a conceptual paper meant to emphasize the apparent explanatory power of Alderson's concepts to today's marketing phenomena. Formal propositions have not been developed and tested.
Practical implications
Traditional classifications of goods no longer accurately explain marketing phenomena arising from the growth of the internet and mass customization. Alderson's concepts provide an effective framework for explaining current phenomena and extending outmoded models.
Originality/value
The four main Alderson concepts evaluated in this paper have not been emphasized as a group before, nor have they been utilized to help explain mass customization and extend traditional consumer goods classifications.
Development of complex products is performed in multi-project environment in which it is crucial to explore interdependencies and manage the uncertainty with the information exchange and the understanding of the context. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a dependence structure matrix and domain mapping matrix approach that enables the systematic identification of interdependencies and relations in a Multi-project environment. These approaches enables clarifications of assumptions, the tractability of dependencies, explores the information needed within and between different departments, projects and people. This creates a transparency and enables the synchronization of actions through transformation of information and exploration of assumptions within and between domains. The outcomes of this process are situational visibility creating direction and accountability and the learning that takes place through communicating, reflecting, understanding, and acting.
Purpose
Product configurator is a sales and production‐planning tool that helps to transform customer requirements into bills‐of‐materials, lists of features and cost estimations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a method of how to analyse sales configuration models by using a design structure matrix (DSM) tool. By applying the DSM techniques, the sales configuration managers may sequence the product configuration questions and organize the connection to production.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the paper explains a sales configuration system structure from published academic and non‐academic works. These sources employ both theoretical and practical views on the topic of computer‐based sales expert systems. Second, the paper demonstrates an application of using DSM for configuration modelling.
Findings
The current sales configuration approaches include constraint‐based, rules‐based, and object‐oriented approaches. Product description methods vary, but the general problem remains the same: the configuration process should be designed in such a way that customer selections do not affect the previous selections. From the user point of view, answering the questions should be smooth and fast. In turn this will lead to the growing importance of building more effective product configuration models. DSM offers a systematic way to organise customer interface in sales configuration systems.
Research limitations/implications
This paper analyses how DSM could help in planning product configuration modelling. Comparison of different sequences is presented. The examples used are hypothetical, but illustrate the suitability of DSM analysis. Companies are trying to establish easily configured product models, which are fast, flexible and cost‐effective for adjustments and modifications. Use of DSM may help in the roll‐out of sales configuration projects. DSM may also be used as a quick view to represent the complexity of product configurability. The future needs for configuration tools will be focused towards product model management from the technical limitations of different data storage approaches.
Practical implications
Configurator software creates product variants, which are logical descriptions of physical products. Variants have parameters which describe the customer‐made selections. The parameter selections may have interconnections between the choices. Some selections may affect further selections and some combinations may not be allowed for incompatibility, cost or safety reasons. There are several commercial software packages available for creating product configurations. Product description methods vary, but the general problem remains the same: the configuration process should be designed in such a way that customer selections do not affect the previous selections. Answering the questions should be smooth and fast. Configuration of complex products, for instance, airplanes, may include several sub‐systems and have various loops within the quotation process. The use of DSM may help in the roll‐out of sales configuration projects. DSM may also be used as a quick view to represent the complexity of product configurability.
Originality/value
The paper helps both researchers and practitioners to obtain a clearer view on the development of sales configuration systems and the potential of systematic DSM‐based product model analysis.
One of the aspects of mass customization is to provide customers with products that are manufactured to their needs and requirements. To provide such support requires better integration of the customer into different stages of design and manufacturing. Expansion of the Internet provides an opportunity for such an integration, which will need to link design and manufacturing of the company with the customer. In current approaches, customers usually specify the options and get the price or simple pictures of the object. In this paper we present a framework in which customer options and size parameters are gathered using the Internet. It is used to automatically generate a 3-dimensional computer-aided design model of the product, estimate the price of the product, and generate assembly sequence information. The framework for mass customization of products necessitates information management among different segments of the company and the customer. The Internet-based system presented in this paper uses a graph grammar and templates to explicitly maintain correspondence among various types of product information from a module perspective. The system is demonstrated using a customizable coffeemaker product family.
Mass customization (MC) is an emergent concept in industry intended to provide customized products or services through flexible process in high volumes and at reasonably low costs. Product customization is an important strategy for accomplishing customer satisfaction with exclusive products at reasonable prices. This paper proposes a decision support system for facilitating design and customer collaboration in the process of selecting product configuration in MC environments. The system integrates object-oriented programming, multiattribute decision analysis, and integer linear programming to support product/service customization where customer choice is managed by the relative relevance of a set of attributes as well as a set of component combinations offered by the company, and restrained by a set of technical, aesthetical, and financial constraints defined interactively by designers and customers. The integration of these models results in the representation of the MC business process taking into account simultaneously the technical, explicit, and objective view taken by designers and the customer's view based on intentions and perceptions. Using the system, the customer can define rules and provide information that can be used to represent tacit knowledge which is incorporated in an integer linear programming (ILP) model that optimizes the utility of a specific customer. As a result, the computer system is capable of implementing in an explicit, dynamic, and flexible way the cognitive process that characterizes the product configuration in MC strategy. The DSS can be considered as a concurrent engineering environment for MC production systems. A simple case study is presented that demonstrate how the program is utilized and the type of output it provides.
Conventional project-management tools--PERT charts and Gantt charts, for example--were created to help manage sequences of discrete tasks that make up large construction projects. Yet these tools don't capture clearly the back-and-forth of information that takes place in innovative processes, such as product development. Conventional tools are designed to answer the question, "What other tasks must be completed before I begin this one?" But product development planners, especially in high-tech businesses, need tools that answer a very different question: "What information do I need from other tasks before I can complete this one?" The author describes the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), a project management tool that focuses on representing the information flows of a project rather than its work flows. He explains how the DSM works and how to use it to make development processes more efficient. A project DSM can show which information exchanges involve design iteration and how well a process anticipates the need for rework. In addition, the author suggests four ways to improve a company's information flows: rearranging the sequence of tasks, reconsidering the organization of tasks, reducing the number of information exchanges, and managing unplannable work. By stripping away the mystery around information exchange during innovation, the DSM can give managers far more control over their most risky and expensive projects.
To develop product portfolios and affective design we need to understand the diversity in user needs. The challenge is how to predict what users want and how they will behave. One approach is to understand user emotions and affective needs, and predict successful product design that can match the needs. This paper discusses affect and its link to cognition. To provide a context, several theories are presented. A framework is described that incorporates characteristics of users, tasks, products, and use environment. The goal is to highlight the importance of emotions in enhancing the value of products. This research field, which we call Hedonomics, is new. There are many challenges in developing valid and reliable measurements of affect, which can influence human factors research as well as design.
A multi-agent based configuration process for mass customization
- T Blecker
- N Abdelkafi
- G Kreutler
Blecker, T., Abdelkafi, N. and Kreutler, G. (2004a) 'A multi-agent based configuration process for
mass customization', in International Conference on Economic, Technical and Organisational
aspects of Product Configuration Systems, Copenhagen.
Mass customization vs. complexity: a Gordon knot?
- T Blecker
- N Abdelkafi
- B Kaluza
- G Kreutler
Blecker, T., Abdelkafi, N., Kaluza, B. and Kreutler, G. (2004b) 'Mass customization vs.
complexity: a Gordon knot?', in Proceedings of 2nd International Conference 'An Enterprise
Odyssey: Building Competitive Advantage', Zagreb.
Computerized Automotive Technology Reconfiguration (CATER) project, Contract No. 035030, a European Commission funded project
CATER (2006) Computerized Automotive Technology Reconfiguration (CATER) project,
Contract No. 035030, a European Commission funded project.
Design and implementation of web-based reconfiguration models for online collaborative product customization
- P T Helo
- S Kyllönen
Helo, P.T. and Kyllönen, S. (2007) 'Design and implementation of web-based reconfiguration
models for online collaborative product customization', in CATER Project, No. IST-5-034030-STREP, 3rd Plenary Meeting, Santorini, Greece.
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