Managing product variety through configuration of pre-assembled vanilla boxes using hierarchical clustering

Postponement strategy and platform-based production are common practices of mass customisation to address supply chain challenges due to the requirement of product variety. This paper focuses on implementing mass customisation through development of semi-finished forms of products (vanilla boxes) to reduce supply chain cost and facilitate the production process. The challenge is that the possible number of vanilla box configurations grows dramatically with the increase in number of product variants. In the solution approach, the basic information of product variety is captured in a matrix format, specifying the component requirements for each product variant. Then, hierarchical clustering is applied over the components with the considerations of demands. The clustering method consists of three major stages: similarity analysis, tree construction and tree-based analysis. The key stage is similarity analysis, in which problem-specific information can be incorporated in the clustering process. Two numerical examples from the literature are used to verify that the clustering approach can yield good-quality solutions.     

Application support to product variety management

Offering a large variety of products at competitive prices and reasonable delivery times is a complex managerial challenge that many companies have to address. Software vendors responded to this challenge by developing and proposing various solutions, such as product configuration (PC) systems, product data management (PDM) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The relative newness, complexity and mutual interdependencies among these systems make it difficult to understand how they—individually and as a whole—actually support a firm in managing its product variety. Precisely these complexities, ultimately, add to the risks of software selection, leading companies to make inconsistent choices or to implement the wrong systems. Starting from this theoretical and practical concern, the present paper provides a conceptualization of the essential functions of PC, PDM and CRM systems, discussing how these functions help a company to manage its product variety and how they relate to each other. This paper proposes that two core data structures of PC systems—namely the sales and technical configuration models—are essential elements of the information management infrastructure of a company offering a large variety of products, because they enable a number of important product variety management functions also present within PDM and CRM systems.     

Manufacturer's product choice in the presence of environment-conscious consumers: brown product or green product

Nowadays, the brown products are losing market coverage to their green alternatives due to consumers' increasing environmental awareness. Confronted with this threat, many traditional manufacturers currently producing only brown product are contemplating the launch of green product. Base on this background, this paper explores the optimal product choice for the manufacturer. We first derive the optimal results for each product choice. Then we analyse the optimal product choice for the manufacturer. Next, we study how to induce the production of green product. Finally, the fraudulent behaviour on product's environmental attributes is addressed. Main findings are as follows. First, manufacturer's optimal product choice is to produce green product if the investment-to-value ratio and the unit production cost for green product are low and to produce brown product if the investment-to-value ratio and the unit production cost for green product are high. Second, the two-part tariff contract is applicable to stimulate the manufacturer to produce green product under certain conditions. While exterior intervention is necessary under other conditions. Third, when the manufacturer and the retailer diverge in product preference, the manufacturer has a strong incentive to behave fraudulently, and this type of manufacturer needs strict supervision.     

Impact of quality variations on product reliability

The reliability of manufactured products can differ from the desired design reliability due to variations in manufacturing quality. Failure data from field provide useful information to assess if the changes in product reliability variations are significant or not and to identify the cause for the variation. In order to devise statistical methods to detect this, one needs to model the effect of quality variations in manufacturing on product reliability. This paper looks at this issue and examines the Weibull case in detail.     

Determination of optimal product mix by marginal analysis

This paper presents an integrated model which simulates the interaction of demand, production cost factors and plant capacity, in order to determine an optimal profit product mix. Factual data from a manufacturing company are analysed, and the results obtained by the model are compared with the plan initially chosen by the company management.

To demonstrate the application of the model, three products which are interchangeable with respect to plant capacity, and which have different profit ratios, cost structures, demand elasticities, and market growth potential are studied.

A computer program which performs the numerous repetitive calculations is described, including a summary report     

Achieving a Superplastic Forming Capability through Severe Plastic Deformation

Processing by severe plastic deformation (SPD) leads to very significant grain refinement in metallic alloys. Furthermore, if these ultrafine grains are reasonably stable at elevated temperatures, there is a potential for achieving high tensile ductilities, and superplastic elongations, in alloys that are generally not superplastic. In addition, the production of ultrafine grains leads to the occurrence of superplastic flow at strain rates that are significantly faster than in conventional alloys so that processing by SPD introduces the possibility of using these alloys for the rapid fabrication of complex parts through superplastic forming operations. This paper examines the development of superplasticity in various aluminum alloys processed by equal‐channel angular pressing (ECAP).     

Achieving ultra-high corrosion-resistant Mg-Zn-Sc alloys by forming Sc-assisted protective corrosion product film

The weak corrosion resistance of magnesium and its alloys greatly limited the industrial application.Though functional self-healing coatings have been proposed as countermeasures,repeated damages on coatings under practical installation and complex external environments could require self-adaptive cor-rosion protection against multiple abrasions.In this study,an ultra-high corrosion-resistant Mg-1Zn-1Sc(wt.％)alloy with a corrosion rate of 0.087 mm/y has been designed and prepared,which has fine grains and uniform structure of a nano-scale ScZn phase with low potential.A unique and dense corrosion prod-uct film with a three-layered structure was found and studied on Mg-1Zn-1Sc alloy,providing excellent corrosion protection.In addition,the formation and protection mechanisms of the three-layered corrosion product film on Mg-1Zn-1Sc alloy have been discussed and proposed.The growth behavior of protective corrosion product film could be driven by the synergy of Sc and Zn elements.Furthermore,with the in-crease of Sc content,the strength,plasticity,and corrosion resistance of Mg-1Zn-xSc(x=0,0.2,0.6,1.0,in wt.％)alloys increased simultaneously.The high corrosion resistance and moderate mechanical perfor-mance qualify Mg-1Zn-1Sc alloy as a promising candidate for diverse industrial applications.     

Design for variety: developing standardized and modularized product platform architectures

Developing a robust, product platform architecture brings an important competitive advantage to a company. The major benefits are 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 product platform architectures. 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. This paper describes the DFV method and uses a water cooler example to illustrate the method. Electronic Publication     

An empirical examination of response time,product variety and firm performance

Response time and product variety are both important strategies that firms utilize to cope with fast changing demand and stiff competition. However, the empirical link between the two areas is not clear. The purpose of this study is to explore the link between response time, product variety and firm performance under build-to-order scenario. A multi-method approach (mainly including OTD time mapping, document examinations, interviews and plant tours) was used to collect the data at the Chinese vehicle manufacturers. Based on the objective data statistically analyzed, this study makes the contribution in three aspects: First, this study provides an empirical examination into the order-to-delivery time structure. The research results reveal that order processing time is independent from producing time. Second, this study provides the first empirical exploration into the association between product variety and response time in the automotive industry. The results show that more model variations may significantly increase order processing time while more type variations do not significantly impact on producing time. Third, the results of this study demonstrate the impacts of both product variety and response time on firm's performance. Fast response time helps increase sales in a short term while more product variety benefits higher growth rate.     

Achieving chiral resolution in self-assembled supramolecular structures through kinetic pathways

Chiral phase transitions were studied in a self-assembled 2,6-dibromoanthraquinones supramolecular system prepared on Au(111) using scanning tunneling microscopy. As the molecules were deposited at about 150?K, they formed heterochiral chevron structures (a racemate) consisting of two alternating prochiral molecular rows. When the as-deposited sample was warmed to 300?K followed by cooling to 80?K, phase-separated homochiral structures (a conglomerate), as well as the chevron structures, were observed. We propose molecular models for the structures that are in good agreement with ab?initio studies and can be explained by hydrogen bonds and halogen bonds. We found that heterochiral chevron structures were more stable than homochiral structures due to two additional [Formula: see text] halogen bonds per molecule. We considered kinetic pathways for the phase transitions that were made possible via a disordered liquid phase entropically stabilized at 300?K. We show how chiral resolution can be achieved by exploiting kinetic paths allowed in supramolecular systems.     

Integrated planning for product module selection and assembly line design/reconfiguration

To take full advantage of product modularity, modular product design and assembly system design/sreconfiguration have to be simultaneously addressed. The emerging reconfigurable production and flexible assembly techniques have made such an integrated approach possible. As such, this paper proposes an integrated approach to product module selection and assembly line design/reconfiguration problems. It further suggests that quality loss functions be used in a generic sense to quantify non-comparable and possibly conflicting performance criteria involved in the integrated problem. The complexity of the problem precludes the use of commercial software for solving meaningful sized problems in polynomial time. A genetic algorithm is therefore developed to provide quick solutions. An example problem is solved to illustrate the application of the proposed approach. Based on 72 randomly generated test problems, ANOVA analysis is further carried out to investigate the effects of genetic algorithm parameters. The convergence behaviour of the search processes is also examined by solving large problems with different numbers of operations and product modules.     

An integrated approach to product family redesign using commonality and variety metrics

Redesigning a product family entails carefully balancing the trade-offs between commonality and differentiation that are governed by the underlying platform architecture. Numerous metrics for commonality and variety exist to support product family and product platform design; however, rarely are they used in concert to help redesign platforms and families of products effectively. In this paper, we introduce an integrated approach that uses multiple product family metrics to establish an effective platform redesign strategy. Specifically, we present a detailed procedure to integrate the generational variety index, product line commonality index, and design structure matrix to prioritize components for redesign based on variety and commonality needs in a family of products. While all three of these tools exist in the literature and have been used extensively to support product family design, the novelty in our work lies in their integration to establish a redesign strategy for platform architectures that achieves a better balance between the commonality and variety within a product family. To demonstrate the proposed approach, case studies involving two generations of wireless computer mice and two families of dishwashers are presented. Ongoing and future work is also discussed.     

Joint product variety,pricing and scheduling decisions in a flexible facility

This paper studies a manufacturer’s optimal product variety, pricing and scheduling decisions in a single flexible production facility when customers have private information in their marginal valuations for product qualities. In addition to determining the product variety and price of each product, the manufacturer needs to optimise a detailed schedule of production (batch sizes and production sequences) to fully utilise the flexibility of this facility. To achieve the second-degree discrimination, the manufacturer provides multiple products and follows a priority rule in the production schedule. To obtain economies of scale, the manufacturer may offer a composite product targeting the whole population, or choose a dedicated product to serve a proportion of customers. Comparing these three production choices, we observe that the optimal product variety strategy is threshold controlled by the relative ratio of customer arrival rates, the relative difference between customers’ marginal valuations and the production technology.     

An optimal choice of window width for LOWESS normalization of microarray data

The purpose of normalization in microarray data analysis is to minimize systematic variations in the measured gene expression levels of two co-hybridized mRNA samples so that biological differences can be more easily distinguished. The most commonly and widely used normalization procedure for spotted arrays is probably the intensity dependent and print-tip LOWESS normalization. It is well known that the choices of different parameter values greatly affect the quality of the normalization results, and thus poor quality of the normalization results could be due to the arbitrary choice of the smoothing parameters for LOWESS normalization. In many normalization studies, however, LOWESS has been simply used without rigorous consideration of the parameters. In this article, we propose a bootstrap method to find the optimal window width in print-tip normalization by applying the cross validation technique. We also compare through simulation studies the normalization results by using the proposed method with those by fixing the window width.     

应用于混合硅氧烷裂解工艺的导热油优选研究

以有机硅工业水裂解工序为依托,模拟生产选择最佳工艺条件,研究该工序生产混合环体过程中使用的一种导热油.使用抚顺3#、7#、哈尔滨2#、天津5#、15#导热油为溶剂油,在特定反应条件下对水解物进行水裂解实验,从中选择出一种反应稳定,处理能力更强,价格更低的导热油.结果表明,5#导热油反应情况最优,可代替目前使用的1#导热油.     

Solution of state-constrained optimal control problems through quasilinearization

Summary Quasilinearization is extended to the numerical solution of multi-point boundary-value problems for ordinary differential equations. It is described how such problems arise from state-constrained optimal control problems. A simple numerical example is given to illustrate the method.     

Improved depth map through optimal axis stereo

Feature-based stereo correspondence techniques suffer from the major limitation that it is difficult to match along epipolar lines and this often results in a sparse set of depth points. Past researchers attempted to solve this problem through trinocular stereo. In this paper, a new method has been proposed for reducing the sparsity of depth points by orienting the epipolar line of the cameras in a direction that maximizes the number of feature points. The corresponding epipolar axis has been termed as the optimal axis. Our analytical as well as simulation results have established that for a limited edge scenario, the proposed approach can lead to considerable improvement in the number of feature points that can be matched. We have introduced a figure-of-merit for the optimal axis and discussed how it is qualitatively related to the variance of the probability density function (pdf). We have also presented the results of our simulation experiment, termed as the random stick experiment. Finally, we have also shown the results of improved reconstructed surface of a synthetic image using optimal axis alignment.