Research On Modeling And Decision Making Technology Of Product Service System Conceptual Design Driven By Customer Value

The fundamental purpose of product design and manufacturing is to createmaximized value for customers who use this product. Factors like increasinghomogenization of product and improving customer requirements to createhigher value promote manufacturing company to turn from providing productsto providing overall solution composed of product and service, namely productservice system (PSS). Service as the most flexible element in PSS, combing withproduct can build much larger solution space to satisfy customer personalizedneeds better. At present, researches on PSS mainly focus on marketing strategies,integral operating architectures and other aspects. Research on PSS conceptualdesign is few. However, conceptual design is the key step of PSS research,which plays a decisive role in achieving implement level of customer value.The introduction of service brings shock to traditional conceptual designtheory and approaches. Tradtional conceptual design is driven by function, and itexpresses and solves problem in the physical space. Therefore, traditional designtheory hardly adapts to the new characteristics of PSS conceptual design. Customer value is the basis of driving customer‘s consumption behavior.Creating maximized value for customers is the final goal of company providingPSS. Information modeling and decision making technology are two keyproblems in conceptual design. The study takes customer value to drive PSSconceptual design, focuses on information modeling and decision-makingtechnology, and selects trenchless pipeline lying PSS as design object to doresearch. The research of this paper has the following five aspects.(1) The exsiting PSS design researches are analyzed. The problem andimproving route of traditional design theory and approaches are given out. PSSconceptual design modeling and decision making techniques driven by customervalue are described.(2) A PSS conceptual design process model composed of value domain,function domain and concept domain is constructed. According to the drivingrole of customer value in PSS conceptual design, value model is constructedbased on customer value hierarchy model, which is used to analyze customerperspected PSS tasks and derive value elements. According to the characteristicsof PSS realization, the modeling method based on input and output flow is usedto construct the function model of PSS. Concept model should express serviceactivity, product structure and integrating relationships between them. Therefore,service information blueprint combining with product structure hierarchy modelis used to construct the concept model of PSS.(3) The problem of determining the importance of engineeringcharateristics in the PSS planning process is researched. Tradtional solvingmethod of design planning problem can not adapt to the condition that PSSvalue elements have complicated translating relationships with engineeringcharacteristics. Value elements are classified into two types: service type and product-service type, and two categories of value elements translating modelsare proposed. Quality function deployment (QFD) approach based on analyticnetwork process (ANP) is proposed to solve the problem of product-service typevalue elements translating. The origin importances of engineering characteristicsare obtained by fuzzy super matrix method. Due to the computing process doesnot consider the requirements of company on the resources, competition andother aspects. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to modify the originalimportances of engineering characteristics.(4) PSS concept characteristics derivation approach based on dynamicassociation rule mining and updating technique and concept generation approachbased on genetic algorithm (GA) are researched. Rich design data can be usedeffectively to assist designer to determine PSS concept characteristics. Thetranslating relationships between PSS engineering characteristics and conceptcharacteristics can be deemed as association relationships. Tradtional associationrule mining approaches suppose that design database is static. However, designdatabase is dynamic, and non-frequent items can change to rules due to insertingof new data. An improved Apriori association rule mining approach which canoutput competitive set, and rules updating approach based on weightingstrategies are proposed. In the PSS concept characteristics set derived accordingto designer‘s experience and association rule sets, each concept characteristicmay have many optional values. Exhaustive method will generate a largenumber of concepts. Therefore, genetic algorithm is used to search several betterconcepts.(5) PSS concept evaluation problem with uncertain information, which usescustomer value realization as evaluating basis, is researched. PSS conceptualdesign is driven by customer value, and concept evaluation should base on customer value realizaition. According to the theory of customer valueevaluation based on banlancing between benefit and cost, PSS conceptevaluating criteria are determined. Artificial neural network (ANN) is used todeterimine the criterion weights to avoid obtaining a large number of multiplecomparison information of criterion weights. PSS concept evaluation objectincludes product and service, and the uncertainty degree of decision informationis enhanced. Traditonal fuzzy set approach dealing with uncertain informationcan not deal with opposing information. Therefore, vague set is used to deal withconcept evaluating information. TOPSIS method is used to sort PSS concepts.Vague cross-intropy is used to compute the deviation degree between two vaguenumbers to treat the vague numbers in the decision matrix effectively. Conceptsorting is based on close degree between each concept and positive idealsolution and close degree between each concept and negative ideal solution.PSS conceptual design prototype system is developed to validate theproposed modeling techniques and key decision making techniques. The systemcan manage design models effectively to assist conceptual design. The proposedapproaches and techniques are applied in the trenchless pipeline lying PSSconceptual design case. This research founds a new design framework for PSSconceptual design, proposes corresponding modeling and decision makingtechniques, and lays a foundation for the further research and company‘spractice in this field.