Configuration-Based Multiple Design-Projects Planning For ETO Product

With the intensifying globalization of markets, manufacturing enterprises are facing with unprecedented challenges and opportunities. To some extent, the technological capability of product Research and Development(R & D) determines the enterprise competition ability. Product design, as the basis of the survival and development for an enterprise, is taken into consideration for the enterprise strategy by corporate managers. Product designing is usually carried out based on customer orders (Engineer to Order, ETO) in modern enterprise. The design process of ETO products with complicated structure is organized as project mode of numerous design assignments.Typically, there are always parallel interactive multiple design projects in a manufacturing corporation. Traditional project planning methods performed less efficiently because of the influence of time schedule, resources, and other uncertain constraints in multiple ETO product design projects. To improve the efficiency of project planning for Engineer to Order (ETO) product design projects in the mass customization mode, a project planning method based on configuration was proposed. As its core idea, a Master Project Work Breakdown Structure (M-WBS) template based on product family was constructed, so as to incorporate sets of time-constraint, resource-constraint and node matching rules. A project configurator was also proposed in order to iterate and reason the constraint rules in M_WBS. This method was evaluated in ETO parallel-projects environment of an industrial steam turbine enterprise. Multiple design projects of industrial steam turbine were planned successfully.Chapter I described the research background and significance of thesis research. Multi-design project planning methodology relevant background literature was summarized firstly. The difficulty of ETO product design project planning was analyzed, and then the main research work on configuration-based ETO product multi-design project planning methodology and organizational framework of this paper was described briefly.Chapter II presented configuration-based ETO product multi-design project planning theory analysis. Comparing with technical characteristics of the configuration and ETO products multi-design project planning, the difference and similarity of these two methodologies was found and discussed. After that, the feasibility of configuration-based ETO product multi-design project planning technology was discussed. The theory framework of project planning master model, constraint rules, and resource model were set up for ETO products multi-design project planning.Chapter III proposed entire algorithm for configuration-based ETO product multi-design project planning process. This algorithm included three sub-algorithms, as the main template selection algorithm, time scheduling algorithms, resource allocation algorithm. Based on empirical data model resource estimate method was also put forward. In resource allocation algorithm, ETO product design resource requirements-distribution trade-off model was established.Chapter IV established Web-based software system for configuration-based ETO product multi-design project planning. After applications and evaluation of this method in an industrial turbine enterprise, configuration-based ETO product multi-design project planning technology performed feasibly and operationally.Chapter V summarized the contents of this paper, and discussed further relevant research prospects.