Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-06T22:44:35.939Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Self-configuring components approach to product variant development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2005

MICHELE GERMANI  and
FERRUCCIO MANDORLI
MICHELE GERMANI
Affiliation:
Mechanical Department, Faculty of Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
FERRUCCIO MANDORLI
Affiliation:
Mechanical Department, Faculty of Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The use of modularity in the design of a new product or the adoption of a product platform, as the base to define new solutions within a product family, offers the company a chance to meet diverse customer needs at low cost because of economies of scale in all phases of the product's life cycle. At present, the concept of modularity in product design is becoming widely used in many industries such as automobiles and consumer electronics. However, if modularity and mass customization have attracted the interest of industries and researchers, the greatest efforts have been focused on the theoretical aspect whereas the related design support technologies have been only partially implemented. In this context, our intent is to develop highly reusable models, which are able to reconfigure themselves on the basis of new functional requirements. The proposed approach is based on the definition of what we call self-configuring components and multiple-level functions. To describe the approach, a practical example related to the design of modules for woodworking machines is reported.

Keywords

Feature-Based ModelFunctional AnalysisProduct Configuration
Type
Research Article
Information
AI EDAM , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , February 2004 , pp. 41 - 54
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Dahmus, J., Gonzalez–Zugasti, J., & Otto, K. (2000). Modular product architecture. Proc. ASME 2000 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DETC'00, Baltimore, MD, September 10–13.
Du, X., Jiao, J., & Tseng, M. (2002). Graph grammar based product family modelling. Concurrent Engineering: Research and Application 10(2), 113–128.Google Scholar
Erixon, G., Von Yxkull, A., & Arnstroem, A. (1996). Modularity—The basis for product and factory reengineering. Annals of the CIRP 45(1), 1–6.Google Scholar
Germani, M., Berti, S., Mandorli, F., & Otto, H. (2001). Design of product families: an example within a small and medium sized enterprise. Proc. 13th Int. Conf. Engineering Design ICED'01, Design Methods for Performance and Sustainability, pp. 507–514, Glasgow, August 21–23.
Gonzalez–Zugasti, J. & Otto, K. (2000). Modular platform-based product family design. Proc. ASME 2000 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DETC'00, Baltimore, MD, September 10–13.
Hirtz, J., Stone, R., McAdams, D., Szykman, S., & Wood, K. (2001). Evolving a functional basis for engineering design. Proc. ASME 2001 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DETC/DTM'01, Pittsburgh, PA, September 9–12.
Jiao, J., Ma, Q., & Tseng, M. (2003). Towards high value-added products and services: Mass customisation and beyond. Technovation 23(10), 809–821.Google Scholar
Jiao, J., Tseng, M., Duffy, V., & Lin, F. (1998). Product family modeling for mass customisation. Computers and Industrial Engineering 35(3–4), 495–498.Google Scholar
Kota, S. & Sethuraman, K. (1998). Managing variety in product families though design for commonality. Proc. ASME 1998 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DETC'98, Atlanta, GA, September 13–16.
Lee, L. & Billington, C. (1994). Designing products and processes for postponement. In Management of Design (Dasu, S. & Eastman, C., Eds.), pp. 105–122. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Mandorli, F. & Bordegoni, M. (2000). Product model definition support for knowledge aided engineering application development. Proc. CD-ROM of DETC'00, ASME 2000 Design Engineering Technical Conf. and Computers and Information in Engineering Conf., Baltimore, MD.
Mandorli, F., Berti, S., & Germani, M. (2002). A KBE system to manage the module configuration using the corporate knowledge. Proc. 7th Int. Design Conf. Design 2002, Vol. 1, pp. 385–390, Dubrovnik, May 14–17.
Mandorli, F., Rizzi, C., Susca, L., & Cugini, U. (2002). An Approach to implement feature-based applications using knowledge aided engineering technology. In Feature Based Life-Cycle Modeling (Soenen, R. & Olling, G.J., Eds.), pp. 41–55. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Martin, M. & Ishii, K. (1997). Design for variety: development of complexity indices and design charts. Proc. ASME 1997 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DECT'97.
Martinez–Larrosa, J.A. & Siddique, Z. (2002). CAD Support for product family design using parametrics, mating relationships, and modularity. In Advances in Concurrent Engineering (Jardim–Goncalves, R. & Steiger–Garcao, A., Eds.), pp. 434–543. Cranfield, MA: Balkema.
Maupin, A. & Stauffer, L. (2000). A design tool to help small manufacturers reengineer a product family. Proc. ASME 2000 Design Engineering Technology Conf. (DECT/DTM'00), Baltimore, MD, September 10–13.
Otto, K. & Wood, K. (2001). Product Design: Techniques in Reverse Engineering and New Product Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall.
Pahl, G. & Beitz, W. (1996). Engineering Design. Berlin: Springer–Verlag.
Payne, E.C. & McArthur, R.C. (1990). Developing Expert Systems: A Knowledge Engineer's Handbook for Rules and Objects. New York: Wiley.
Pine, J. (1992). Mass Customisation: The New Frontier in Business Competition. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Sainter, P., Oldham, K., Larkin, A., Murton, A., & Brimble, R. (2000). Product knowledge management within knowledge-based engineering systems. Proc. CD-ROM of DETC'00, ASME 2000 Design Engineering Technical Conf. and Computers and Information in Engineering Conf., Baltimore, MD.
Siddique, Z. (2001). Estimating reduction in development time for implementing a product platform approach. Proc. ASME 2001 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DETC'01, pp. 123–131, Pittsburgh, PA, September 9–12.
Simpson, T., Maier, J., & Mistree, F. (2001). Product platform design: Method and application. Research in Engineering Design 13, 2–22.Google Scholar
Soininen, T., Tiihonen, J., Mannisto, T., & Sulonen, R. (1998). Towards a general ontology of configuration. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 12(4), 357–372.Google Scholar
Stone, R., Wood, K., & Crawford, R. (1998). A heuristic method to identify modules from a functional description of a product. Proc. ASME 1998 Design Engineering Technology Conf. DETC'98, Atlanta, GA, September 13–16.
Stone, R., Wood, K., & Crawford, R. (2000). Using quantitative functional models to develop product architectures. Design Studies 21, 5–31.Google Scholar
Stumptner, M. (1997). An overview of knowledge-based configuration. AI Communications 10(2), 111–126.Google Scholar
Susca, L., Mandorli, F., & Rizzi, C. (2002). How to represent intelligent components in a product model. In From Knowledge Intensive CAD to Knowledge Intensive Engineering (Cugini, U. & Wozny, M., Eds.), pp. 159–172. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Tichem, M., Andreasen, M., & Riitahuhta, A. (1999). Design of product families. Proc. 12th Int. Conf. Engineering Design ICED'99, Vol. 2, pp. 1039–1042, Munich, August 24–26.
Tiihonen, J., Lehtonen, T., Soininen, T., Pulkkinen, A., Sulonen, R., & Riitahuhta, A. (1999). Modeling configurable product families. Proc. 12th Int. Conf. Engineering Design ICED'99, Vol. 2, pp. 1139–1142, Munich, August 24–26.
Ulrich, K. (1995). The role of product architecture in the manufacturing firm. Research Policy 24, 419–440.Google Scholar
Ulrich, K. & Eppinger, S. (2000). Product Design and Development (Pahl, G., Ed.). New York: McGraw–Hill.