Applying fuzzy multiple attributes decision making for product configuration

Mass customization (MC) is an emergent concept in industry intended to provide customized products through flexible processes in high volumes and at reasonably low costs. The method of configuration is one of important ways to realize quickly product customization. But, in business, particularly through the Internet, a customer normally develops in his mind some sort of ambiguity, given the choice of similar alternative products. This paper proposes a new approach to product configuration by applying the theory of fuzzy multiple attribute decision making (FMADM), which focus on uncertain and fuzzy requirements the customer submits to the product supplier. The proposed method can be used either in the product data management system or e-commerce websites, with which it is easy for customers to get his preferred product according to the utility value with respect to all attributes. Finally, the digital camera is taken as an example to further verify the validity and the feasibility of the proposed method.     

Extended object model for product configuration design

This paper presents an extended object model for case-based reasoning (CBR) in product configuration design. In the extended object model, a few methods of knowledge expression are adopted, such as constraints, rules, objects, etc. On the basis of extended object model, case representation model for CBR is applied to product configuration design system. The product configuration knowledge can be represented by the extended object. The model can support all the processes of CBR in product configuration design, such as case representation, indexing, retrieving, and case revising. The presented model is an extension of the traditional object-oriented model by including the relationship class used to express the relation between the cases, constraints class used in the product configuration knowledge representation, index class used in case retrieving, and solution class used in case revising. Therefore, the product configuration knowledge used in the product configuration design can be represented by using this model. In the end, a metering pump product configuration design system is developed on the basis of the proposed product configuration model to support customized products.     

Overcoming the customization-responsiveness squeeze by using product configurators: Beyond anecdotal evidence

Anecdotal evidence suggests that product configurators may be crucial in improving time performance when offering customized products so as to overcome what has been termed the customization-responsiveness squeeze. Large-scale hypothesis-testing studies that either corroborate this finding or discover unpredicted boundaries of validity are still lacking, however. Our paper contributes to fill this gap by testing the positive impact of product configurator use on time performance on a sample of 238 manufacturing plants from three industries and eight countries. The results support the hypothesized impact after the effects of widely acknowledged antecedents of accelerated time performance have been removed. Implications of our findings for both research and practice are finally discussed.     

Personalized product configuration rules with dual formulations: A method to proactively leverage mass confusion

Mass confusion is a metaphor of the burdens for customers as a result of attractive but probably overloaded options in mass customization interaction process. This perceived risk of mass customization has been revealed and discussed in last decade and most research concentrates on the personalization of the interaction behaviour between front-end roles, i.e. customers and salesmen. Although the research in the front-end helps to improve customers’ satisfaction, the risk of mass confusion cannot be well leveraged by isolated personalization in the front-end: the intensive involvement of customers and salesmen also brings challenges to their patience, qualification and the responsiveness of configuration activities. Differing from most existing research, this research tries to propagate the effort of personalization from front-end roles to back-end configuration knowledge by proposing a kind of personalized configuration rules (PCRs). To simultaneously alleviate the difficulties in PCR acquisition, representation and deduction, both symbolic and connectionist methodologies are adopted to establish dual formulations for PCR development. Although these two methodologies are theoretically disparate, approaches based on specific rule extraction technique are proposed to coordinate the dual formulations and make them complementary in application. A case study of the proposed methodology for bicycle configuration is presented.     

A systematic data-mining-based methodology for product family design and product configuration

Product family design and product configuration based on data mining technology is identified as an intelligent and automated means to improve the efficiency of product development. However, few of previous literatures have proposed systematic product family design method based on data mining technology. To make up for this deficiency, this research put forward a systematic data-mining-based method for product family design and product configuration. First, the customer requirement information and product engineering information in the historical order are formatted into structural data. Second, principal component analysis is performed on historical orders to extract the customers' differentiated needs. Third, association rule algorithm is introduced to mine the rules between differentiated needs and module instances in the historical orders, thus obtained the configuration knowledge between customer needs and product engineer. Forth, the mined rules are used to construct association rule-based classifier (CBA) that is employed to sort out the best product configuration schemes as popular product variants. Fifth, sequence alignment technique is employed to identify modules for popular product variants, so that the module instances are divided into optional, common and special module, respectively, thereby the product platform is generated based on common modules. Finally, according to new customer needs, the CBA classifier is used to recommend the best configuration schemes, and then popular product variants are configured based on the product platform. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated by the product family design example of desktop computer hosts.     

Towards product customization: An integrated order fulfillment system

To stay competitive, manufacturing companies nowadays pursue product customization; and configure-to-order (CTO) has been recognized as an ideal business model to implement product customization. Due to the complexities resulting from the large number of customized products, an increased attention has been paid to the order fulfillment process in CTO. However, most of the solutions delivered either focus on own interested areas without considering the impacts from/on the others or approach order fulfillment processes from a strategic level. In view of the limitations of existing solutions and the significance of order fulfillment activity automation and integration, this study considers the entire spectrum of order fulfillment process at an operational level and, proposes an integrated order fulfillment system (IOFS). The IOFS is designed to (1) automatically execute order processing, which is conventionally undertaken in a face-to-face manner; (2) configure products and process plans based on product and process family models; and (3) allow real-time data extraction and sharing of the latest information. Therefore, it assists companies to quickly respond to diverse customer requirements and deliver the expected products at low costs. An industrial example of turn unit assemblies is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and potential of the IOFS for product customization.     

Supporting distributed product configuration by integrating heterogeneous variability modeling approaches

ContextIn industrial settings products are developed by more than one organization. Software vendors and suppliers commonly typically maintain their own product lines, which contribute to a larger (multi) product line or software ecosystem. It is unrealistic to assume that the participating organizations will agree on using a specific variability modeling technique—they will rather use different approaches and tools to manage the variability of their systems.ObjectiveWe aim to support product configuration in software ecosystems based on several variability models with different semantics that have been created using different notations.MethodWe present an integrative approach that provides a unified perspective to users configuring products in multi product line environments, regardless of the different modeling methods and tools used internally. We also present a technical infrastructure and a prototype implementation based on web services.ResultsWe show the feasibility of the approach and its implementation by using it with the three most widespread types of variability modeling approaches in the product line community, i.e., feature-based, OVM-style, and decision-oriented modeling. To demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of our approach, we present an example derived from industrial experience in enterprise resource planning. We further applied the approach to support the configuration of privacy settings in the Android ecosystem based on multiple variability models. We also evaluated the performance of different model enactment strategies used in our approach.ConclusionsTools and techniques allowing stakeholders to handle variability in a uniform manner can considerably foster the initiation and growth of software ecosystems from the perspective of software reuse and configuration.     

Impact of product configuration systems on product profitability and costing accuracy

This article aims at analyzing the impact of implementing a product configuration system (PCS) on the increased accuracy of the cost calculations and the increased profitability of the products. Companies that have implemented PCSs have achieved substantial benefits in terms of being more in control of their product assortment, making the right decisions in the sales phase and increasing sales of optimal products. These benefits should have an impact on the company’s ability to make more accurate cost estimations in the sales phase, which can positively affect the products’ profitability. However, previous studies have not addressed this relationship to a great extent. For that reason, a configure-to-order (CTO) manufacturing company was analyzed. A longitudinal field study was performed in which the accuracy of the cost calculations and the products’ profitability were analyzed before and after a PCS was implemented. The comparison in the case study revealed that increased accuracy of the cost calculations in the sales phase and consequently increased profitability can be achieved by implementing a PCS.     

Multiple platforms design and product family process planning for combined additive and subtractive manufacturing

Industry 4.0 promotes the utilization of new exponential technologies such as additive manufacturing in responding to different manufacturing challenges. Among these, the integration of additive and subtractive manufacturing technologies can play an important role and be a game changer in manufacturing products. In addition, using product platforms improves the efficiency and responsiveness of manufacturing systems and is considered an enabler of mass customization. In this paper, a model to design multiple platforms that can be customized using additive and subtractive manufacturing to manufacture a product family cost-effectively is proposed. The developed model is used to determine the optimal number of product platforms, each platform design (i.e. its features set), the assignment of each platform to various product variants, and the macro process plans for customizing the platforms while minimizing the overall product family manufacturing cost.The multiple additive/subtractive platforms and their process plans are determined by considering not only the commonality between the product variants but also their various manufacturing cost elements and the customer demand of each variant. The design of multiple product family platforms and their process plans is NP-hard problem. A genetic algorithm-based model is developed to reduce the computational complexity and find optimal or near optimal solution. Two case studies are used to illustrate the developed multiple platform model. The model results were compared with a single platform model in literature and the results demonstrate the multiple platform model superiority in manufacturing product families in lower cost. The use of the developed model enables manufacturing product families cost efficiently and allows manufacturers to manage diversity in products and market demands.     

An interactive genetic algorithm with the interval arithmetic based on hesitation and its application to achieve customer collaborative product configuration design

Complex product configuration design requires rapid and accurate response to customers’ demand. The participation of customers in product design will be a very effective solution to achieve this. The traditional interactive genetic algorithm (IGA) can solve the above problem to some extent by a computer-aided user interface. However, it is difficult to adopt an accurate number to express an individual's fitness because the customers’ cognition of evolutionary population is uncertain, and to solve the users’ fatigue problem in IGA. Thus, an interactive genetic algorithm with interval individual fitness based on hesitancy (IGA-HIIF) is proposed in this paper. In IGA-HIIF, the interval number derived from users’ evaluation time is adopted to express an individual's fitness, and the evolutionary individuals are compared according to the interval probability dominant strategy proposed in this paper. Then, the genetic operations are applied to generate offspring population and the evolutionary process doesn’t stop until it meets the termination conditions of the evolution or user manually terminates the evolution process. The IGA-HIIF is applied into the design system of the car console configuration, and compared to the other two kinds of IGA. The extensive experiment results are provided to demonstrate that our proposed algorithm is correct and efficient.     

Development of a product configuration system with an ontology-based approach

Product configuration is a crucial means to implement the mass customization paradigm by assembling a set of customizable components to satisfy both customers’ needs and technical constraints. With the aim of enabling efficient and effective development of product configuration systems by reusing configuration knowledge, an ontology-based approach to modeling product configuration knowledge is presented in this paper. The ontology-based product configuration models are hierarchically organized. At the lower level, a configuration meta-model is defined. Based on this meta-model, domain-specific configuration knowledge can be derived by reusing or inheriting the classes or relations in the meta-model. Configuration models are formalized using OWL (Ontology Web Language), an ontology representation language developed by W3C. As a result, configuration models have well-defined semantics due to the logic semantics of OWL, making it possible to automatically detect inconsistencies of configuration knowledge bases. Furthermore, configuration constraints are represented in SWRL, a rule language based on OWL. Finally, actual configuration processes are carried out using JESS, a rule engine for the Java platform, by mapping OWL-based configuration facts and SWRL-based configuration constraints into JESS facts and JESS rules, respectively. The proposed methodology is illustrated with an example for configuring the ranger drilling machine.     

大规模定制下基于本体的服务产品配置研究*

为了研究服务产品大规模定制的实现,探讨了服务产品大规模定制的实现机理和关键技术,指出模块化设计对服务产品族及服务产品平台的重要性。在服务产品模块化设计的基础上,为了提高服务产品配置知识的共享性和重用性,提出了一般服务产品配置的模型和概念,结构化了服务产品配置的构件和模块,建立了服务产品配置本体。采用网络本体语言OWL形式化服务产品配置的结构知识,采用语义网规则语言SWRL编码服务产品配置的约束知识,并分别映射到JESS推理系统的知识库和规则库中,使用JESS推理机执行推理过程,产生配置结果。为说明该方法的     

产品配置的知识表示

为按照用户的需要定制售卖产品的公司提供支持的基于知识的配置系统,产品配置器是人工智能技术的一个重要应用.本文首先描述了配置问题及其相关概念,然后分析了某些配置知识表示的优缺点,在此基础上提出了产品配置知识的图形表示方法,最后讨论了目前的一些热点研究问题.     

Identifying variety-induced complexity cost factors in manufacturing companies and their impact on product profitability

Many manufacturing companies experience increasing product variety, which not only leads to significantly increased operations’ costs but also to an uneven distribution of these costs across product variants. To deal with this challenge, managers need to accurately quantify the costs of product variety-induced complexity to understand its impact on company revenues. However, quantifying complexity costs is no trivial task, as both the variety-related factors that generate more complexity and the costs implied by these factors are specific to each company. Therefore, we extensively reviewed the relevant literature to build a list of possible complexity cost factors generated by product variety, which are here named variety-induced complexity cost factors (VCCFs). This list is intended to be used by managers as a reference set of VCCFs to help identify and subsequently quantify the costs of product variety-related complexity in manufacturing companies and finally attribute them to end product variants. To evaluate the usefulness of this list, the identified VCCFs were examined in six companies using both the judgment of managers and data from their enterprise resource planning systems. This empirical examination not only provides evidence of the usefulness of this list but also data, rarely available in academic literature, on the costs of product variety-induced complexity and its proportion of company revenue. It also suggests that it is important to research effective ways to get, elaborate, and present data to calculate the costs of product variety-related complexity and reports a viable approach used in six companies.     

Applying principles of mass customization to improve the empirical product development process

Applying methods of mass customization to the empirical process can improve product development process efficiency and reduce time and cost. Empirical methods are used to develop predictions of product behavior in conjunction with analytical methods or instead of analytical methods. These empirical methods represent a complete sub-product development process within the overall product development process. Application of process decomposition and planning used in mass customization can improve the efficiency, lower the time and cost of these empirical processes. This paper presents a method for applying principles of mass customization to the empirical sub-processes within a product development process. Two case studies are also presented to demonstrate the method.     

Applying case-based reasoning for product configuration in mass customization environments

Product variation and customization is a trend in current market-oriented manufacturing environment. Companies produce products in order to satisfy customer's needs. In the customization environment, the R&D sector in an enterprise should be able to offer differentiation in product selection after they take the order. Such product differentiation should meet the requirement of cost and manufacturing procedure. In the light of this, how to generate an accurate bill of material (BOM) that meets the customer's needs and gets ready for the production is an important issue in the intensely competitive market.

The purpose of this study is to reduce effectively the time and cost of design under the premise to manufacture an accurate new product. In this study, the Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) algorithm was used to construct the new BOM. Retrieving previous cases that resemble the current problem can save a lot of time in figuring out the problem and offer a correct direction for designers. When solving a new problem, CBR technique can quickly help generate a right BOM that fits the present situation.     

The documentation of product configuration systems: A framework and an IT solution

When designing and maintaining a product configuration system (PCS), complete and up-to-date documentation of the system is needed in the form of a product model that outlines the structures, attributes, and constraints of the PCS. Furthermore, up-to-date documentation for the PCS is crucial for maintenance, further development, system quality and communication with domain experts. Product models are the main communication and documentation tools used in PCS projects. Recent studies have shown that up-to-date documentation for the PCS is often lacking due to the significant amount of work required to maintain product models. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an approach for documenting the PCS that is based on the structure, attributes, and constraints modelled within the PCS, in which the product model is generated directly from the PCS. The suggested approach avoids knowledge duplication, as knowledge needs to be maintained within the PCS only. It involves two steps: the first is the building of the initial product model, which is used for the programming of the PCS. In the second step, the product model is generated directly from the PCS and is based on the structure, attributes, and constraints inside the PCS. The product model does not need to be maintained, therefore, outside the PCS. This approach meets the demand for agile documentation and efficient communication with domain experts, and uses the fewest resources possible. Furthermore, to support the framework, an IT documentation system is proposed that is capable of retrieving knowledge from the PCS and thus generating the product model. Our framework and IT documentation system were developed and tested at a case company on five different projects. The results confirm that benefits can be achieved by using the proposed IT documentation system, as time and resources are saved, while the quality of the PCS is improved.     

Mass production of tooling product families via modular feature-based design to manufacturing collaboration in PLM

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is recognized as one of the most effective approaches for better, fast and cheaper product development and management. Mass customization is one of the key technologies in PLM to provide tailored product to end customers with the cost of mass production. Characterized by short production lead-time and dynamic customer requirements with low batch size and high variety, tooling product families are facing the challenge of high production cost. New technology with modular feature-based design to manufacturing collaboration to satisfy the needs of mass production with low cost in tooling industry is developed in this study. A corresponding prototype system is demonstrated to show the efficiency of the technology developed.     

A layout technique for class diagrams to be used in product configuration projects

The use of product configurators has produced a range of benefits for several companies, such as minimizing the use of resources and shortening the lead times in product specification processes. When developing a product configurator, two kinds of models are often created, namely analysis models and design models. Since the task of describing product knowledge in analysis models involves domain experts, the analysis language has to be easily understandable in order to avoid the need for extensive training. For this task, the so-called Product Variant Master (PVM) diagramming technique is often applied. With regard to the design model, the requirements for the language focus more on a formalized and rich language, which is why class diagrams are often applied. To avoid the use of different modelling languages in the analysis and design phase, this paper proposes the layout technique ‘Vertically Aligned Class Diagrams’ (VACDs), which incorporate the usability of PVMs into class diagrams. To validate the usefulness of the VACD technique, the paper compares VACDs to PVMs and class diagrams in a utility analysis and a usability experiment. These investigations strongly indicate that VACDs maintain to a great extent the combined advantages of PVMs and normally drawn class diagrams. Thus, the use of VACDs in configurator projects has the potential to increase efficiency, improve communication and reduce errors.