Linda L. Zhang

Product configuration: a review of the state-of-the-art and future research

Being able to provide companies with a number of advantages in delivering customised products, product configuration has received increasing attention from the academia and lasting interests from industries in the past several decades. While several surveys and reviews have been reported shedding light on specific issues in product configuration, a general overview is missing. By systematically presenting important concepts, definitions and issues underlying product configuration, such a review is of paramount importance to develop practical solutions, which ultimately contributes to efficient design, development and implementation of product configurators in practice. This study, thus, tries to fill this gap by reviewing the state-of-the-art research on product configuration. It touches on the major issues, definitions and concepts in product configuration along with the corresponding studies, such as configuration ontology, system design and development, and configuration solving. Based on the review, future research is highlighted as well.

Optimal selection of retailers for a manufacturing vendor in a vendor managed inventory system

A Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system consists of a manufacturing vendor and a number of retailers. In such a system, it is essential for the vendor to optimally determine retailer selection and other related decisions, such as the product’s replenishment cycle time and the wholesale price, in order to maximize his profit. Meanwhile, each retailer’s decisions on her willingness to enter the system and retail price are simultaneously considered in the retailer selection process. However, the above interactive decision making is complex and the available studies on interactive retailer selection are scarce. In this study, we formulate the retailer selection problem as a Stackelberg game model to help the manufacturer, as a vendor, optimally select his retailers to form a VMI system. This model is non-linear, mixed-integer, game-theoretic, and analytically intractable. Therefore, we further develop a hybrid algorithm for effectively and efficiently solving the developed model. The hybrid algorithm combines dynamic programming (DP), genetic algorithm (GA) and analytical methods. As demonstrated by our numerical studies, the optimal retailer selection can increase the manufacturer’s profit by up to 90% and the selected retailers’ profits significantly compared to non-selection strategy. The proposed hybrid algorithm can solve the model within a minute for a problem with 100 candidate retailers, whereas a pure GA has to take more than 1h to solve a small sized problem of 20 candidate retailers achieving an objective value no worse than that obtained by the hybrid algorithm.

Generic bill of functions, materials, and operations for SAP2 configuration

Most available studies on configuration focus on either sales configuration specifying functional features or production configuration addressing product components. It has been well recognised that automating most of the activities associated with specification, engineering, and process planning of customised products and their interactions is one key in achieving product customisation. Thus, treating sales configuration and product configuration separately may not contribute to product customisation from a systematic view although they may lead to the improvement of individual stages. Recognising this limitation of existing studies, in this paper, we propose integrated SAles, Product and Production (SAP2) configuration, which helps achieve product customisation from a holistic view. Its rationale lies in automating consistently sales, product and production configuration activities in one system. In view of the importance of configuration models, we focus on the model underpinning SAP2 configuration called generic bill of functions, materials and operations (GBoFMO) and discuss it in detail. As the core of SAP2 configuration, GBoFMO can provide companies with an insight into organising the large volumes of data and knowledge in the life cycle of product family development. We also report a case study of light passenger aircrafts to illustrate the GBoFMO.

SysML-based design chain information modeling for variety management in production reconfiguration

Satisfying diverse customer needs leads to proliferation of product variants. It is imperative to model the coherence of functional, product and process varieties throughout the design chain. Based on a model-based systems engineering approach, this paper applies the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) to model design chain information. To support variety management decisions, the SysML-based information models are further implemented as a variety coding information system. A case study of switchgear enclosure production reconfiguration system demonstrates that SysML-based information modeling excels in conducting requirements, structural, behavioral and constraints analysis and in performing trade-off study. In addition, it maintains semantic coherence along the design chain, keeps traceability across different levels of abstraction, thus improving interoperability among heterogeneous tools.

Domain-based production configuration with constraint satisfaction

Production configuration is well recognised as an effective means of planning production processes for product families. The major challenge of production configuration originates from the handling of the numerous constraints associated with product and process variety. This paper develops a constraint satisfaction approach to facilitate production configuration decisions regarding constraint identification, representation, and evaluation. A domain-based model is formulated to conceptualise the production configuration process, involving inter-connections among multiple domains in conjunction with diverse domain decision variables and constraints. Within the domain framework, production configuration is formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), which is solved using constraint heuristic search. Within constraint heuristic search, a decision propagation structure incorporating a connectionist approach is developed to facilitate the exploration of solution spaces. A case study of textile spindle production configuration is elaborated to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the domain-based CSP model for production configuration.

Optimal design of a 3D compact storage system with the I/O port at the lower mid-point of the storage rack

As a new generation of automated warehousing systems, 3D compact storage systems have been increasingly installed worldwide for handling inventory items in warehouses, distribution centres and manufacturing factories. Due to the problem complexity and system novelty, research investigating these systems, design models in particular, lags behind. This study, thus, addresses the design of 3D compact storage systems, where the I/O port is located at the lower mid-point of the storage rack, in attempting to assist practitioners in designing such systems that can achieve optimal performance while meeting system capacity requirements. In view of its importance in system design, we first derive the system expected travel time and subsequently optimise the three dimensions of the storage rack. We consider all the possible configurations of the three rack dimensions and develop closed form expressions for travel time derivation and rack dimension optimisation. We compare the result with an available design model, where the I/O port is located in the lower left-corner of the storage rack. The comparison shows that our model produces shorter system expected travel time, thus higher system throughput. We also elaborate several numerical examples to demonstrate how our model can be applied to design 3D compact storage systems in practice. Based on the numerical examples, we further provide several managerial implications, which are useful for practitioners to make suitable design decisions.

Towards a BIM Approach for a High Performance Renovation of Apartment Buildings

Building renovation is a key issue for energy saving in the future. The goal of this article is to show how this traditional activity can be industrialized thanks to a BIM supported process. The critical needs are explained and the proposed BIM presented.

Some experimental results relevant to the optimization of configuration and planning problems

This communication deals with mass customization and the association of the product configuration task with the planning of its production process while trying to minimize cost and cycle time. We consider a two steps approach that first permit to interactively (with the customer) achieve a first product configuration and first process plan (thanks to non-negotiable requirements) and then optimize both of them (with remaining negotiable requirements). This communication concerns the second optimization step. Our goal is to evaluate a recent evolutionary algorithm (EA). As both problems are considered as constraints satisfaction problems, the optimization problem is constrained. Therefore the considered EA was selected and adapted to fit the problem. The experimentations will compare the EA with a conventional branch and bound according to the problem size and the density of constraints. The hypervolume metric is used for comparison.

Identifying mapping relationships between functions and technologies: An approach based on association rule mining

On one hand, design technologies provide solution principles to deliver product functions; on the other hand, they play a major role in achieving efficiency and effectiveness in product design and production. Recognizing this importance of technologies in product development and in response to the lack of investigation, this study proposes an approach based on association rule mining to identify mapping relationships between functions and technologies. Such mapping relationships not only help firms effectively decide on technologies and the corresponding details but also enable them to reuse proven knowledge about functions and technologies. A case study of microlithography machines is reported to demonstrate how the proposed approach identifies mapping relationships from given function and technology data and how these relationships help select technologies and determine details.

A cloud-based approach to specifying new components in open configuration

Open configuration is proposed to assist companies in configuring products that can meet both unforeseen and predefined customer requirements. This study investigates the open configuration process and proposes an approach based on cloud computing. Based on a cloud, the open configuration process includes three sub-processes: new component specification, constraint processing, and component modification and refinement. This study sheds light on the details of new component specification sub-process. Laptop computer open configuration is used to demonstrate how new components are specified.