Methods And Technologies For Customer Options Oriented Modular Products Development

Challenges from economic globalization push firms into a new dilemma in complexproduct/system industry, namely, the difficulties of configuration management, theun-controlled high cost of manufacturing and management, and the low efficiency of productdevelopment. This dilemma requires a fundamental change in product development mode,with which low investments could support continued development of new products. Althoughmodularity strategy, as a key approach to shift development mode, has valued by industry andacademia, and has gotten well developed, a complete implementation framework of modularproduct development are not proposed yet. This dissertation is intended to provide a solutionfor this problem.(1) Product-option-oriented modular product development (POOMPD) model isproposed based on the analysis and synthesis on the contributions in industry and academic,and a framework for POOMPD is established. Of the framework, some significant conceptsand items are re-defined for clarifications, and an overall process is built for implementingPOOMPD.(2) A way to formally represent modular products for POOMPD is developedemphasized upon the requirements of platform establishment, model product development,and module instance development. A generic structure for modular products is broughtforward, and the comparisons to the three important existing generic structures are fulfilled.At same time, a formal description approach is proposed to model modular products.(3) An approach to plan product options is proposed for POOMPD based on the analysisof market requirements. It is composed of an overall process, a method for product optionselection, and a way for optimizing product option with a solving model. (4) A lifecycle-oriented modular approach is proposed based on the analysis andintegration of product modularity benefits and the effects to green product development. Theapproach is composed of an integrated process with seven modularity ways, a measurementsystem, and an implementation program. This approach has incorporated all the benefits ofmodularity into the product development process.(5) Starting from the structural analysis of a modular product platform, a hypergraph-based model of modular product platform is established, and a building model of threeprinciples with four goals is proposed. At same time, an improved intelligent algorithm forcooperative co-evolutionary is developed to solve the building model of modular productplatform.(6) Customer-involved product configuration pattern sets focus on three aspects of thecustomization pattern, customization mechanism, and the delivery process of modularproducts. A modular product configuration model is proposed based on the analysis ofconfiguration item attributes, modules, and incubators. Product configuration systememphasizes on three aspects of customization feasibility, the match of best instances, and thecalculation of product configuration.In addition, a prototype software system is developed in this research, which aims toverify the search contents above with a demonstration case. Research results in this studyprovide several novel methods and framework to assist firms for implementing POOMPD, andto shorten distances between theoretical research and requirements in industries.