Product- and CAD-Structure Planning Processes for Mass Customization Products

Mass Customization (MC) is one approach to deal with the continuous increasing demand for individualized products. It’s major objective is to offer products with delivery times and prices comparable to mass produced goods. Hereby assigned possibilities are not only limited to the customization of appearance but affect a multitude of customer requirements, e.g. functions, technical attributes, or structural arrangements. Two major steps in designing customizable products are the product structure planning and the designing of CAD-models. The work presented in this paper specifies the mutual interdependencies as well as the data, which has to be exchanged in this alternating process. For an iteratively optimized planning of customizable products, knowledge will be extracted from parametric design for a further adaptation in the product spectrum structure. Using appropriate algorithms, the need for structure modifications will be derived, with the objective of eliminating critical interdependencies from the basic structure. The alternating data exchange between parametric product modeling and abstract structure planning helps to integrate bidirectional requirements (e.g. new techniques in manufacturing) or boundary conditions appearing at different design phases.     «

Mass Customization (MC) is one approach to deal with the continuous increasing demand for individualized products. It’s major objective is to offer products with delivery times and prices comparable to mass produced goods. Hereby assigned possibilities are not only limited to the customization of appearance but affect a multitude of customer requirements, e.g. functions, technical attributes, or structural arrangements. Two major steps in designing customizable products are the product structure...     »