An Approach to Quantifying Design Flexibility for Mass Customization in Early Design Stages

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Cormier ◽  
Andrew Olewnik ◽  
Kemper Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Customer Preferences ◽  
Design Flexibility ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Early Design Stages ◽  
Design Options ◽  
Research Metrics

With the increasing stratification of customer preferences, companies must offer a number of options to remain competitive. Current methodologies, such as product families, seek to offer more options to the consumer while minimizing costs to the company. Customizable products are striving to offer the customer what they truly desire by increasing the level of influence the consumer has on their instance of the design. As the shift from cosmetic changes and modular options continues, systems will be required to have a greater amount of design flexibility to allow for the changes made by individual consumers. Drawing on reconfigurable system and product family research, metrics for flexibility are proposed for use in the early stages of the design process. Discussion focuses on functional aspects of a product which affect flexibility and the rational behind the component metrics representing their flexibility. The goal of the metrics is to assist with the evaluation of design options by rating the overall flexibility of the system early in the design process. A case study is presented to demonstrate the use of the metrics.

Strategic Decisions in the Early Stages of Product Family Design

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. A. Maier ◽  
Georges M. Fadel
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Product Introduction ◽  
Single Product ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Formal Design

Abstract The realization that designing products in families can and does have significant technological and economic advantages over traditional single product design has motivated increasing interest in recent years in formal design tools and methodologies for product family design. However, currently there is no guidance for designers in the first key strategic decisions of product family design, in particular determining the type of product family to design. Hence in this paper, first a taxonomy of different types of product families is presented which consists of seven types of product families, categorized based on number of products and time of product introduction. Next a methodology is introduced to aid designers in determining which type of product family is appropriate, based upon early knowledge about the nature of the intended product(s) and their intended market(s). From this information it also follows both which manufacturing paradigm and which fundamental design strategies are appropriate for the product family. Finally the proposed methodology is illustrated through a case study examining a family of whitewater kayaks.

Knowledge Model for Managing Product Variety and Its Reflective Design Process

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yutaka Nomaguchi ◽  
Tomohiro Taguchi ◽  
Kikuo Fujita
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Product Architecture ◽  
Air Conditioner ◽  
Knowledge Model ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Reflective Process ◽  
Reflective Design ◽  
Computer Based

Recent manufacturers have been utilizing product families to diversify and enhance the product performance by simultaneously designing multiple products under commonalization and standardization. Design information of product architecture and family is inevitably more complicated and numerous than that of a single product. Thus, more sophisticated computer-based support system is required for product architecture and family design. This paper proposes a knowledge model for a computer-based system to support reflective process of designing product architecture and product family. This research focuses on three problems which should be overcome when product family are modeled in the computer system; design repository without data redundancy and incorrectness, knowledge acquisition without forcing the additional effort on the designer, and integration of prescriptive models to support early stages of the design process. An ontology that is a foundation of a knowledge model is defined to resolve these problems. An example of designing an air conditioner product family is shown to demonstrate the capability of the system.

Designing Product Families With Competition: A Design for Market Systems Approach

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peyman Karimian ◽  
Jeffrey W. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Original Problem ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Customer Preferences ◽  
Manufacturing Productivity ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Design For Market Systems

Manufacturing firms use product families to provide variety while maintaining economies of scale to improve manufacturing productivity. Designing a successful product family requires consideration of both customer preferences and the competition. This paper presents a design for market systems approach to product family design and solves the problem of designing a product family when the competition is simultaneously designing its product family. In particular, the problem is formulated as a two-player zero-sum game. Our analysis of this problem shows that it can be separated into multiple subproblems whose solution provides an optimal solution to the original problem. The paper presents an example to illustrate the approach.

EXPRESSING PRODUCT DIVERSIFICATION — CATEGORIZING AND CLASSIFYING VARIABILITY IN SOFTWARE PRODUCT FAMILY ENGINEERING

2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (05) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHEL JARING ◽  
JAN BOSCH
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Product Diversification ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Family Development ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Software Product ◽  
System Maturity ◽  
Industrial Software ◽  
The Military

In a software product family context, software architects design architectures that support product diversification in both space (multiple contexts) and time (changing contexts). Product diversification is based on the concept of variability: a single architecture and a set of components support a family of products. Software product families have to support increasing amounts of variability, thereby making variability engineering a primary concern in software product family development. The first part of this paper (1) suggests a two-dimensional, orthogonal categorization of variability realization techniques and classifies these variability categories into system maturity levels. The second part (2) discusses a case study of an industrial software product family of mobile communication infrastructure for professional markets such as the military. The study categorizes and classifies the variability in this product family according to criteria common to virtually all software development projects.

Case Study: User Adoption of a Product Configuration Management System at a Modular Playground Equipment Producer

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bethany M. Byron ◽  
Steven B. Shooter
Keyword(s):  
Management System ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Information Management System ◽  
Product Configuration ◽  
Training Methods ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Product Configuration Management ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
User Adoption

Product platform and product family strategies place tremendous demands on the efficient capture, storage, and retrieval of information in the form of product data. The user’s adoption of an information management system for product families and mass customization is critical for allowing the system to perform as it ought. The following is a case study at a major modular playground equipment producer undergoing the implementation of a new graphical-based configurator for managing its mass customized products. The case study examines the proliferation of software packages to perform configuration and the flow of information in the configuration process. Next, the new configurator is evaluated on its new features to capture, store, and reuse configurations and its visual appeal. Last, the paper addresses the personal behaviors and training methods used for increasing adoption and their success.

Customer-Centric Product Modeling for Rapid Product Identification in One-of-a-Kind Production

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Hong ◽  
D. Xue ◽  
Y. L. Tu
Keyword(s):  
Attribute Reduction ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Modeling ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Pattern Clustering ◽  
Customer Information ◽  
Product Identification ◽  
Fuzzy Pattern ◽  
Industrial Company

One-of-a-kind production (OKP) is a new manufacturing paradigm to produce customized products based on requirements of individual customers while maintaining the quality and efficiency of mass production. In this research, a customer-centric product modeling scheme is introduced to model OKP product families by incorporating the customer information. To develop this modeling scheme, data mining techniques, including fuzzy pattern clustering method, and hybrid attribute reduction method, are employed to achieve the knowledge from the historical data. Based on the achieved knowledge, the different patterns of OKP products are modeled by different sub-AND-OR trees trimmed from the original AND-OR tree. Since only partial product descriptions in a product family are used to identify the optimal custom product based on customer requirements, the efficiency of custom product identification process can be improved considerably. A case study to identify the optimal configuration and parameters of window products in an industrial company is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the introduced approach.

An Approach to Product Family Positioning Based on Shared Surplus

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiyang Zhang ◽  
Jianxin Jiao
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Target Market ◽  
Product Lines ◽  
Market Segments ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Notebook Computer ◽  
Customer Preferences ◽  
Engineering Costs

To compete in the marketplace, manufacturers have been seeking for expansion of their product lines by providing product families. Product family positioning aims at planning the appropriate products to be provided to the target market segments. Due to the involved complexity such as diverse customer preferences, engineering costs, competition among similar products, etc, positioning the product family is very difficult. This paper proposes a shared surplus model for product family positioning. A comprehensive methodology for product family positioning is developed. An application of the proposed methodology for the notebook computer family positioning is reported.

A novel approach based on utility mining for store layout: a case study in a supermarket

2017 ◽  
Vol 117 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serkan Altuntas
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Business Intelligence ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Data Mining Algorithm ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Utility Mining ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Novel Approach

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel approach based on utility mining for store layout. Design/methodology/approach A utility mining-based data mining algorithm is utilized in this paper. Findings A real-life case study in a supermarket is conducted to illustrate the proposed approach. The findings show that the proposed approach can be used easily and efficiently to arrange store layout. Research limitations/implications There are two limitations to this study. First, space allocation to each product family is not considered. Second, product placement in each product family is not taken into account in the proposed approach. Originality/value In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for business intelligence in retail business. The proposed approach uses a utility-based data mining approach, namely, the high-utility itemset mining (HUIM) algorithm, to rearrange store layout and to determine the relations among product families. The quantities and prices of items purchased corresponding to product families are taken into account in the proposed approach to address the needs in practice. Business intelligence software is also developed as an integral part of the proposed approach to utilize the HUIM algorithm.

Module and Product Family Formation Based on Improved Interpretive Structure Model

2006 ◽  
Vol 532-533 ◽  
pp. 821-824
Author(s):  
Jun Hua Che ◽  
Jian Rong Tan ◽  
Yun Wang ◽  
Yi Xiong Feng
Keyword(s):  
Mass Customization ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Structural Mapping ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Structural Graph ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Voice Of Customer

The module and product family formation are the important technologies for mass customization. This paper provides a novel method of establishing the module for mass customization so that we can construct the various product families for the individuation demand. This method can obtain the driven design way of demand through the VOC (Voice of customer) report and obtain the components through the functional and structural mapping .This method accounts for the specification flow between components rather than merely the relation and similarity of the components, represents the hierarchical relations and related design constraints of the product by a structural graph and helps designers to create various product for mass customization. The methodology also is illustrated via the case study of the product family design of forklift.

Developing design literacy through brand-based artefacts

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina LELIS
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Basic Design ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Socially Responsible ◽  
Interaction Structure ◽  
Functional Prototype ◽  
High Willingness

The brand is a powerful representational and identification-led asset that can be used to engage staff in creative, sustainable and developmental activities. Being a brand the result of, foremost, a design exercise, it is fair to suppose that it can be a relevant resource for the advancement of design literacy within organisational contexts. The main objective of this paper was to test and validate an interaction structure for an informed co-design process on visual brand artefacts. To carry on the empirical study, a university was chosen as case study as these contexts are generally rich in employee diversity. A non-functional prototype was designed, and walkthroughs were performed in five focus groups held with staff. The latter evidenced a need/wish to engage with basic design principles and high willingness to participate in the creation of brand design artefacts, mostly with the purposeof increasing its consistent use and innovate in its representation possibilities, whilst augmenting the brand’s socially responsible values.

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