Product Configuration Based On Modular Product Family And Translation Of Customer Requirement

Mass customization, aiming at delivering an increasing product variety that best serves customer needs while keeping mass production efficiency, becomes a necessary paradigm for manufacturing industries, and product family and modular design are essential technologies to achieve mass customization. Product family consists of common modules and customized ones under special configuration mechanism. Based on product family and modularity, the customer-driven product configuration translates the customer requirement to module attributes request, so as to select appropriate basic modules and customized ones. So, it is important to erect mapping relationship between customer requirement and module attributes and erect modular product family model, in order that enterprises can achieve reconfiguration design rapidly with veracity and low cost.Firstly, the elementary theories of customer requirement mapping, product family model and modular design are presented. The concepts of Quality Function Deployment and product family are introduced briefly, and the product family model, i.e. function model, solution model and structure model with the mapping relation among them is emphasized. After then, the principle of modular design and the influence of module granularity on assemble, cost and customer-tailor is analyzed. At the same time, the merits of modular design in product family development in mass customization are illustrated.Secondly, the modular product family model is erected based on modular design and product family model. The product family is decomposed into various generic modules, and then module models are set up for each generic module, which are expressed by module attributes variables, so that the product family model is erected accordingly. Afterwards, the hierarchy relationship in modular product family structure, module attribute variables classification and the constraints relevant to module model and attribute variables are analyzed. Finally, a case is applied to explain the problems.Thirdly, the customer requirements are translated to technical requirements by product planning matrix, and technical requirements are mapped to module attribute variables by module deployment matrix so that the value and weight of attribute variables can be calculated. By doing this, the blurry, qualitative and nonstandard customer requirement can be translated to quantitative and exact design information. And then, the search and combination of modules are researched.Lastly, the price constitution of product in mass customization is illustrated, and the relation of customer satisfaction, product price and the product similarity to customer requirement is researched. According to the principle of similarity in the product cost and module classification, the manufacturing cost of basic module and customized ones is estimated and computed respectively. Based on the introduction of price sensitivity of customer, the function on the customer satisfaction index and price is supposed and studied.