Research On The Knowledge-Based Product Configuration Modeling, Evolution And Application

The design and production of goods that satisfy the special needs of individual customers are of central interest to the industry. A major trend is to improve customer specific adaptation with configurable products. As a knowledge-based design activity, product configuration has recently attracted a lot of research and industrial interest. This dissertation aiming at the complex mechanical product, systematically researches on product configuration modeling and solving, configuration knowledge reuse, configuration design process management, evolution of configuration model and reconfiguration etc. The theory and methods presented in the dissertation have proved to be correct and advanced by the applications in two enterprises.The order of presentation is as follows:Chapter 1 presents a review of the history of product configuration and present development. The knowledge-based product configuration modeling and solving is emphasized and introduced. In addition, the research backgrounds, main contents, purpose and importance of this dissertation are also discussed.In chapter 2 the relation between product configuration and product platform, product family and mass customization is discussed, and a design method of modular product platform is presented. Based on the product platform, a product family is a group of products which share common form features and functions, targeting one or multiple market niches. Product configuration can be implemented in families by instantiation of configuration model.By integrating the explicit and implicit product knowledge, in chapter 3, a product configuration model GPCM, which is aiming at mechanical product and based on the GBOM (Generic-Bill-Of-Materials), is presented. The constraints relation between configuration units, which are made up of configuration model, is introduced. In the GPCM, generic product structure is used to describe structural knowledge and rules to represent the implicit knowledge, this reduce the complexity of mechanical product configuration.Chapter 4 presents a new framework to integrate case-based reasoning (CBR) with a Constraint Satisfaction Problem(CSP) and realizes the reuse of the design resources and configuration case that exist in the case base. In the framework, CBR first retrieves similar cases from the case base in which past successful configurations are stored. Then the adaptation is carried out based on the minimum conflicts repair algorithm and configuration model that consists of a product family that is defined in advance. The similarity measure between crisp value and a range are also given.In chapter 5, the differences between the product configuration design process and the general product design process are discussed. After introducing the main contents and work flows of product configuration design, we present a product configuration design process model. Moreover, the three decomposing task structures, three decomposing layers and two templates about the model are also given. By this, the integration product configuration design process management with product data structure management is well realized.In chapter 6, dynamic characteristic of product configuration, actual requirement of reconfiguration, the difference between configuration design and reconfiguration are described. On the basis of this, we then present a version propagation rule of configuration model and configuration unit. In addition, three different configuration levels are also proposed to express configuration environment, and a reconfiguration algorithm is also given to reconfigure a desired product using the old configuration product and the new configuration model. Chapter 7 presents the PDM support to the product configuration. Supported by China 863 Hi-tech Program and Zhejiang province manufacturing enterprise information program, a GEMC-PDM system centered on the product configuration and design process management is developed and has been proved to be practical and valuable.In chapter 8. all achievements of the dissertation are summarized and the furthe...