Process platform planning for mass customisation production (original) (raw)
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IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 2000
The key challenge of implementing mass customization manufacturing lies in the variety dilemma exhibited by frequent design changes and recurrent process variations. A holistic view of variety handling gives rise to the importance of variety coordination from design to production. This paper proposes a concept of process platform for coordinating product and process variety. Fundamental issues of process platforms are studied regarding generic product and process structures, generic planning, and generic variety representation. Variety handlers and associated states are introduced to model the meta-structure inherent in variety coordination. A set of modeling formalisms are developed to provide a powerful syntactic model to support rigorous analysis and manipulation of process platforms, while facilitating the application of semantics to support process platform enactment and detailed observations from a number of perspectives involving customers, design and production. Also reported is a case study of mass customization manufacturing of vibration motors for mobile phone products. The managerial implications of process platform planning are further discussed.
Process Platform-Based Production Configuration
Volume 2: 31st Design Automation Conference, Parts A and B, 2005
In nowadays' changing manufacturing environment, designing product families based on product platforms has been well accepted as an effective means to fulfill product customization. The current production practice and academic research of platform based product development mostly focus on the design domain, whereas limited attention is paid to how production can take advantage of product families for realizing economy of scale through enormous repetitions. This paper puts forward a concept of process platforms, based on which an efficient and cost saving production configuration for new members of a product family can be achieved. A process platform implies three aspects, including generic representation, generic structures and generic planning. The issues and rationale of production configuration based on a process platform are presented. A multilevel system of nested colored object-oriented Petri Nets with changeable structures is proposed to model the configuration of production processes. To construct a process platform from existing process data, a data mining approach based on text mining and tree matching is introduced to identify the generic process structure of a process family. An industrial example of high variety production of vibration motors for hand phones is also reported.
Using Product and Manufacturing System Platforms to Generate Producible Product Variants
Procedia CIRP, 2016
Product platforms have proven efficient as a means to reduce lead-time and increase product quality simultaneously. When using platforms to generate a family of products, the number of variants that need to be managed in manufacturing increases. To succeed with this, the manufacturing system needs to be maintained in a similar level of flexibility as the product platform. However, there is seldom a joint decision behind each and every conceptual product variant during development, regarding capability in manufacturing. For example, when considering producibility, some product variants require better tolerances than what the manufacturing processes can deliver. This uncertainty can be reduced, by making producibility analyses of a set of conceptual product variants. By performing several different analyses, knowledge can be gained, and joint decisions can be made about cross product-manufacturing aspects. The activities can be systematically arranged to gradually eliminate unfeasible conceptual product variants. In this paper we show how an integrated PLM architecture can be used to create sufficient knowledge as a basis for joint product and manufacturing decisions. The utmost company benefit of this is to reduce lead-time by taking manufacturing capability into account when developing product families.
Process platform representation based on Unified Modelling Language
International Journal of Production Research, 2007
Today's manufacturing companies have strived to develop a large variety of customer-specified products in an effort to survive and stay competitive. Process platforms have been well recognized as a means for companies to obtain a stable production and thus the economy of scale. A process platform assists companies in configuring similar production processes for producing families of customized products at low costs through managing product and process variety coherently. Within a process platform, all data related to the product and process families are unified as a common generic structure. To shed light on the various constituent elements and complex relationships inherent in a process platform, this paper emphasizes the structural representation of a process platform. A formalism of process platform representation is developed based on the Unified Modelling Language. It consists of a generic product structure, a generic process structure and an integrated generic routing structure. Also reported is a case study of vibration motors for hand phones.
Product and production process modeling and configuration
Fundamenta Informaticae, 2013
Product configuration systems are an emerging technology that supports companies in deploying mass customization strategies. Such strategies need to cover the management of the whole customizable product cycle. Adding process modeling and configuration features to a product configurator may improve its ability to assist mass customization development. In this paper, we describe a modeling framework, PRODPROC, that allows one to model both a product and its production process. We first introduce our framework by describing how configurable products are modeled. Then, we describe the main features and capabilities offered to model production processes and to link them with the corresponding products models. The configuration task (namely, the procedure that, from a configurable object/activity generates a configured product/process) is then analyzed. We also outline a possible CSP-based implementation of a configurator. A comparison with some of the existing systems for product configuration and process modeling emphasizes that none of the considered system/tools offers the complete set of features supported by PRODPROC for interdependent product and process modeling/configuration. by combining a series of available components and options (modules, accessories, etc.) or by specifying suitable parameters (lengths, tensions, etc.). Actually, a configurable product does not correspond to a specific physical object, but identifies a set of (physical) objects that a company can realize. A configured product is a single variant of a configurable product, obtained by specifying each of its customizable attributes, which corresponds to a fully-specified physical object. The configuration process consists of a series of activities and operations ranging from the acquisition of information about the variant of the product requested by the customer, to the generation of data for its realization.
2010
In this era of temporary competitive advantage, both the coordination of the interdependencies among product, process, and supply chain design decisions, as well as the mass customization business strategy approach, have been identified as key drivers. The paper gives a comprehensive overview of the research advances achieved in the field of product-processes-supply chain structures alignment for mass customization scenarios by identifying and structuring key research issues as well as key research approaches to deal with them. Derived from this analysis, relevant uncovered research issues have been identified, suggesting this way promising further research lines.
DETC2000 / DFM-14021 Design for Variety: A Methodology for Developing Product Platform Architectures
2000
Developing a robust, product platform architecture brings an important competitive advantage to a company. The major benefit is reduced design effort and time-to-market for future generations of the product. This paper describes a step-by-step method that aids companies in developing such a product platform architecture. Using the concept of specification "flows " within a product development project, the design for variety (DFV) method develops two indices to measure a product's architecture. The first index is the Generational Variety Index (GVI), a measure for the amount of redesign effort required for future designs of the product. The second index is the Coupling Index (CI), a measure of the coupling among the product components. The design team uses these two indices to develop a decoupled architecture that requires less design effort for follow-on products.
Mass customization in the product life cycle
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 2013
This study presents an introduction to mass customization in the product life cycle-the goal of mass customization, mass customization configurations, and new customer integration techniques, modular design techniques, flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs), and supply chain management methods. The study reviews three selected books and twenty-one selected papers-early papers that describe the goal of mass customization, early papers that describe mass customization configurations, and recent papers that describe new customer integration techniques, modular design techniques, FMSs, and supply chain management methods. The study shows that the goal of mass customization is to create individually customized products, with mass production volume, cost, and efficiency, that most companies use 'assemble-to-order' configurations to create standardized products, and that more work is needed on interactive customer integration techniques, collaborative modular design techniques, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, and integrated supply chain management methods to achieve the goal of mass customization.
An Engineer-To-Order Mass Customization Development Framework
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2014
Developers of automated manufacturing systems are often categorised as Engineer-To-Order companies, relying on the ability to offer solutions that are tailored to the individual consumer. Managing product variety and enabling reusability between solutions becomes key concepts towards increasing competitiveness and revenue, in which Engineer-To-Order companies may benefit from adopting Mass Customization concepts. As automated manufacturing systems tends to be software intensive, it become equally important to enable reusability for physical components and for software related artefacts. In parallel to Mass Customization, Software Product Line Engineering has emerged as a way for software developers to manage variability and reusability. This paper seeks to combine the concepts of Mass Customization and Software Product Line Engineering, by introducing a development framework applicable for Engineer-To-Order companies offering automated manufacturing systems.