Methodologies for providing rapid and effective response to request for quotation (RFQ) of mass customization products

Mass-customized production is a paradigm that provides individually customized products and services at a price and time frame comparable to those of mass production. A mass-customized production company should be capable of operating profitably in a time-critical and customer-driven competitive environment. Although the concept of mass-customized production and the related methodologies and computer-aided technologies for improving the planning, execution, and delivery of mass-customized products have been investigated over the past decade, there are neither formal models nor fundamental breakthrough developments in the area of rapid response to customer demands. It is only recently, with the emergence of supply chain management, customer relationship management, and the growing use of the internet, that mass-customized production companies have begun to realize the potential for gaining significant benefits and competitive advantage by improving the companies' ability to rapidly and effectively respond to their customer demands.; To contribute to the area of mass-customized production and supply chain management, and, in particular, to provide a means to quickly respond to customers' needs, this dissertation focuses on finding a way to rapidly and effectively answering the most common but very important questions to process a customer's request for a quotation: (1) Is the product manufacturable? (2) What will be the cost of the product? and (3) How much time will it take to build and deliver the product?; To find the best way to answer rapidly and effectively the above questions, the following research issues are addressed: (1) By integrating concepts from constraint-based reasoning, set theory, and generative bills-of-material, develop a new product structuring model that provides engineers with a means of describing variants of build-to-order products as well as to quickly and accurately identify the manufacturability of the products. (2) Examine the proposed product family structuring and representation model for its potential to serve as a master bills-of-material database that provides multiple views to support different functions. (3) By applying case-based reasoning and parametric cost estimation, develop a methodology for rapid and accurate estimation of manufacturing cost for mass-customized products.; To validate the proposed methodologies for giving a rapid and effective response to a customer's request for a quotation, a case study was conducted on a make-to-order company which supplies vibration and shock protection products. A prototype rapid product configurator and cost estimation system (PCCE) were developed for the study. Compared to the existing product structuring models, the proposed model provides engineers with a means to describing all possible product variants with a limited amount of data which is comprehensive, easy to maintain, and easy to understand. Further, the proposed model also allows robust implementation of the case-based reasoning methodology for rapid and accurate estimation of manufacturing cost for mass customized products (i.e., case memory representation, cases indexing, and case adoption). The investigation of the proposed methodology for cost estimation shows that case-based reasoning is able to produce reasonably accurate estimation of manufacturing cost of built-to-order products in a very short time-frame.; The present work provides mass customization companies with an ability to systematically and accurately respond to their customers in a timely manner with better explanation and justification of their response.