Theory And Application Of Flexible Product Platform

The customer satisfication is the goal of compays'management and production and in mass customization mode companys have to provide individual product for the customer to content different personal requirments. So the customer needs are the crucial fators for a company's success. Due to the drastic global competition and rapid technology development, market driven by customer becomes more international and dynamic and the uncertaincy is the basic character of both technical and commercial circumstance in mass customization. The speed of science and technology development becomes more and more quickly, so the difficulty of forecasting the future development about market and product core technology is improved, as well as the renewal speed of different generation product is faster than before. Accord to the new challenge in the mass customization, the product platforms of a company is hardly to keep up with the demand of tomorrow customer. In this condition, the uncertaincy which is related to the company outside circumstance is more complex. At the same time, the product function and structure are all complicated, there are lots of redesign which decreasing the design effcency, increasing the manufacture cost and process complexity during the variety design for the interaction between function and structure. So the uncertaincy which is related to the company inside management is more complex too.Focus on the more complicated uncertaincy of company in the mass customization, this thesis combines the flexible product develop stratagem and product platform deisgn, carry out the flexibl platform design by the innovation and variety two dirctions. The flexible product platform design improves the ability of accommodating variable market on the basis of commoanlity of product platform. This thesis includes four part of contents, first is the market analysis and technology innovation plan of product platform, second is the flexible function platform design, third is the flexible structure platform design, and the last is the case study of belet conveyor whose flexible product platform is design by this method. The detailed contents are as following:(1) Market analysis and technology innovation plan of product platform: Analizing the similar products'product platform, then generalizing the customer requirement about products'function and performance as well as the trend of the product platform's technology. The needs and function evolution law are introduced to market orientation of product platform by forecasting the future market variety and their influences to the product platform functions. The technology maturity measuring and technology evolution routes of TRIZ are applied to identify the technical developing direction of future prdocut platform by the forcecastin of product paltform technology.(2) Flexible function platform design: According to market orientation and technology innovation plan of the product platform, the baic function of product platform is decomposed into levels function and technology subsystem by the function independence axiom of axiomatic design. The function structure is constructed by interrelations of sub functions, and the function modules are partitioned according to three flow rule by analyzing the sub function's input and output. The basic function platform and flexible function assembly are iedentified by the relations that the function modules realizing some cusotemr needs. The flexibility of customizing function is carried out by the combination of basic function platform and flexible function, and the flexible function platform is also adde or removed some different function modules to satisfy different market niches requirements.(3) Flexible structure platform design: The design parameters of variety design are clustered according to the different customer needs and are related with change of customer needs. The design parameter matrix is applied to analzing the weight of every design paramenter and the common design parameters are identified as the current platform parameters. The platformn parameters is optimized to layout the parameter values. The optimizing goal is improving the commoality of variable product platform design parameters, the optimizing constraint is the satisifying different customer needs. The quantitative change range of platform parameter values contented to different market gridding are confirmed and then the relationship between platform parameters and product constructures are also built to help the disgner to make decision of selecting product platform during the variety design.(4) Flexible product platform design of belt conveyor: Belt conveyor has about 300 years history and its technology is very mature, its customer needs are basicly stabile. The main differents requirmet of customer are the different working environments which demands some additional demands about belt conveyor properties. This thesis focus on the technology driven product platform of belt conveyor, forecasts the evolution of belt conveyor key technology and confirms the key technology of next generation belt conveyor. For the belt conveyor is subjected by its working condition such as landform, feeding ability and feeding obliquity which demands every blet conveyor must be redesign so the belt conveyor design has a lot uncertaincy during the development. All variety design of belt conveyor is modified by the old design, so the flexible product platform of belt conveyor is constructed to carry out the funtinal and technical flexibility which improve the belt conveyor's ability of response to the variety of market.