Study On Configuration Management Of Product Families With Graph Grammars For Mass Customization

Mass Customization(MC) aims at providing customized products with the efficiency and cost of mass production. With the drastic market competition, companies have to transit from mass production, which focus on products, to mass customization, which focuses on customers. The difficulty of implementing MC increases because the number of product variants is huge. Product family configuration management is a form of product data organization and management, proper method of product family configuration management can manage the huge number of product variants, and decrease the difficulty of implementing MC. An approach to description of product family with Graph Grammar(GG) and its computer realization are studied mainly. The strategy of product development for MC which enterprises should take is analysed; The architecture of product family is established; The process of product family development is analysed, and based on it, mathematic model of product family development is established with axiom theory.An approach to description of product family with graph grammar is presented. Firstly, the relation between graph grammar and product family is studied, and based on it, the graph grammar model for product family is established in functional domain and physical domain. The method of product family configuration and the process of product family configuration with graph grammar are expounded. Finally, the models are applied to the description of a product family of motorcycles.The concept, function structure and work process of product family configuration management system with graph grammar are expounded, and its architecture is presented. Use-case modeling, static modeling, dynamic modeling, coding and deployment analysis are made for the product family configuration management system with graph grammar using Unified Modeling Language(UML). Based on system modeling, the prototype system is developed, and the feasibility of product family configuration management with graph grammar is testified.