Coordinated Optimization Of Low-carbon Product Family And Its Manufacturing Process Design By A Bilevel Game-theoretic Model

While increasing environmental issues arising from product development and manufacturing activities have attracted much attention from both academia and industry alike,few researches have addressed joint optimization of product family architecting(PFA)and its manufacturing process configuration(MPC)considering environmental concerns.Existing researches have neglected either the hierarchical characteristics underlying these two optimization problems or complex interactions among PFA,MPC,and environmental concerns,and thus fail to reveal the inherent coupling between PFA and MPC with considerations of environmental impacts.In this paper,a leader-follower joint optimization(LFJO)approach for coordinating low-carbon product family architecting(L-CPFA)and low-carbon manufacturing process configuration(L-CMPC)is proposed.The L-CPFA decision by a designer(game-leader)is represented as an upper-level optimization problem for optimal selection of module instances,primitive modules,compound modules,and product variants from the perspectives of economic and environmental performances through constructing an environmental utility function.The L-CMPC decision by a manufacturer(game-follower)is modeled as a lower-level optimization problem in order to select the optimal green production mode of each primitive module,the manufacturing mode of each compound module,and the assembly and transportation modes of each product variant according to the upper-level decision.A nonlinear,0-1 integer bilevel programming model is developed,and then solved by a nested bilevel genetic algorithm(NBGA)to obtain optimal or near-optimal solutions.A case study of joint L-CPFA and L-CMPC decisions for a microwave oven product family is presented,and the results demonstrate that carbon emissions have apparent impacts on product family design and its manufacturing process design decision.Integrating low-carbon awareness into product family development activities is beneficial and advisable for enterprises to increase customer-perceived utilities and competitive advantage.The our model can handles well the conflict problems in the development of low-carbon product family as well as the tradeoff between enterprise’s profits and environmental impacts.