Research On Modeling, Balancingand Scheduling For Product Design Stream Line

With the rapidly change of global environment and technology development, thecapabilities of R&D (research and development) will be the key factor whether it willsurvive. However, Product development of Chinese industrial company has low efficiencyand high cost, whcih can not meet the rapid development of the production and marketingcapacity, product demand and new technology. Design stream line is born to solve theseproblems.With the advantage of standardization, generalization, and high efficiency ofstreamlining production, design stream line combined with the complexity, ambiguity anduncertainty of the product development process. Design stream line has the design taskswith Takt time and balancing tasks flow which support effective and rapid product design.Surrounded with the two scientific problem (technology design and organizational design),model, analysis, line balancing and scheduling of design stream line is presented by usingcomplex networks, fuzzy theory and intelligent algorithms. And a prototype system ofdesign stream line for automotile design is built. The paper is mainly focus on thefollowing aspects:1) The same points of the environment for the production lines which the designprocesses have are analysed. And summarizes the main characteristics and scientific issuesof design stream line are summarized, and main content and innovation of technologyresearch are then described. Furthermore, the related methods of design stream line arereviewed and summarized.2) With difference of the design processes and manufacturing processes, the keytechnologies and framework of design stream line are presented. The concept modelofdesign stream line and the key objects are defined. Stream line is modeled based onsemantic networks and complex networks. Information models and semantic relationmodels are built based on semantic network models, and bipartite networks and theirprojected networks are modeled for numerical information.3) Combination and partition of design tasks and recognization of the design-process-element is presented for technical design of stream line. The structure model of designtasks with the combination and decomposition based on knowledge units is the basic ofrecognization of the design-process-element. Network motif is used to recognize the interactive pattern of the design-process-element. Measure indices of the interactivepattern are presented based on the topology of complex networks which is the basic ofdesign-process-element optimization. The design-process-element solves the conflictbetween unique of design tasks and common of stream line.4) To the organizational design, line balancing based on fuzzy theory is presented fordesign stream line and improved GA is described to solve the problem. Considered theuncertainty, interation and long cycle time of product design, the duration estimationmethod of design tasks is presented integrated with fuzzy numbers and DSM. Amathematical model of line balancing is proposed, and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) isutilized to find the optimum solution.5) Considered of the high level of design imprecision and employees with multipleskills and different skill levels, a product development projects scheduling problem withmulti-skilled employees and multiple modes is presented. A calculation methodology ofdesigners’ Capacity based on bipartite networks and social networks is presented, whichcombines the designers’ capabilities of know-how and know-who knowledged. Amathematical model of multi projects scheduling problem subject to the precedence andresource constraints is presented, and an extended partical swarm Algorithm is presentedto find the optimum solution.At last, a prototype system of design stream line for automobile design is built basedon B/S and C/S modes. A case of an automobile design is used to illustrate the problemand proposed method. The results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of this algorithm.