A Comparison of Commonality Indices for Product Family Design

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri J. Thevenot ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Global Marketplace ◽  
Manufacturing Costs ◽  
Product Families ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Commonality Index

Today’s highly competitive and global marketplace is redefining the way companies do business: many companies are being faced with the challenge of providing as much variety as possible for the market with as little variety as possible between products. In order to achieve this, product families have been developed, allowing the realization of a sufficient variety of products to meet the customers’ demands while keeping costs relatively low. The challenge when designing a family of products is in resolving the tradeoff between product commonality and distinctiveness: if commonality is too high, products lack distinctiveness, and their individual performance is not optimized; on the other hand, if commonality is too low, manufacturing costs will increase dramatically. Toward this end, several commonality indices have been proposed to assess the amount of commonality within a product family. In this paper, we compare and contrast six of the commonality indices from the literature based on their ease of data collection, repeatability and consistency. Eight families of products are dissected and analyzed, and the commonality of each product family is computed using each commonality index. The results are then analyzed and compared, and recommendations are given on their usefulness for product family design. This study lays a foundation for understanding the relationship between different platform leveraging strategies and the resulting degree of commonality within a product family.

scholarly journals Product platform design and customization: Status and promise

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIMOTHY W. SIMPSON
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Lead Times ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Global Marketplace ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Product Platforms

In an effort to improve customization for today's highly competitive global marketplace, many companies are utilizing product families and platform-based product development to increase variety, shorten lead times, and reduce costs. The key to a successful product family is the product platform from which it is derived either by adding, removing, or substituting one or more modules to the platform or by scaling the platform in one or more dimensions to target specific market niches. This nascent field of engineering design has matured rapidly in the past decade, and this paper provides a comprehensive review of the flurry of research activity that has occurred during that time to facilitate product family design and platform-based product development for mass customization. Techniques for identifying platform leveraging strategies within a product family are reviewed along with metrics for assessing the effectiveness of product platforms and product families. Special emphasis is placed on optimization approaches and artificial intelligence techniques to assist in the process of product family design and platform-based product development. Web-based systems for product platform customization are also discussed. Examples from both industry and academia are presented throughout the paper to highlight the benefits of product families and product platforms. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential areas of research to help bridge the gap between planning and managing families of products and designing and manufacturing them.

scholarly journals To write or not to write: censorship in "The Woman in the Photo" by Tia Șerbănescu and "A Censor’s Notebook" by Liliana Corobca

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-27
Author(s):  
Monica Manolachi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Psychological Process ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Censorship as a literary subject has sometimes been necessary in times of change, as it may show how the flaws in power relations influence, sometimes very dramatically, the access to and the production of knowledge. The Woman in the Photo: a Diary, 1987-1989 by Tia Șerbănescu and A Censor’s Notebook by Liliana Corobca are two books that deal with the issue of censorship in the 1980s (the former) and the 1970s (the latter). Both writers tackle the problem from inside the ruling system, aiming at authenticity in different ways. On the one hand, instead of writing a novel, Tia Șerbănescu kept a diary in which she contemplated the oppression and the corruption of the time and their consequences on the freedom of thought, of expression and of speech. She thoroughly described what she felt and thought about her relatives, friends and other people she met, about books and their authors, in a time when keeping a diary was hard and often perilous. On the other hand, using the technique of the mise en abyme, Liliana Corobca begins from a fictitious exchange of emails to eventually enter and explore the mind of a censor and reveal what she thought and felt about the system, her co-workers, her boss, the books she proofread, their authors and her own identity. Detailed examinations and performances of the relationship between writing and censorship, the two novels provide engaging, often tragi-comical, insights into the psychological process of producing literary texts. The intention of this article is to compare and contrast the two author’s perspectives on the act of writing and some of its functions from four points of view: literary, cultural, social and political.

Optimal Kinematics Design of an Industrial Robot Family

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan O¨lvander ◽  
Xiaolong Feng ◽  
Bo Holmgren
Keyword(s):  
Mass Customization ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Industrial Robots ◽  
Mathematical Framework ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Product Families ◽  
The Common ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Common Platform

Product family design is a well recognized method to address the demands of mass customization. A potential drawback of product families is that the performance of individual members are reduced due to the constraints added by the common platform, i.e. parts and components need to be shared by other family members. This paper presents a formal mathematical framework where the product family design problem is stated as an optimization problem and where optimization is used to find an optimal product family. The object of study is kinematics design of a family of industrial robots. The robot is a serial manipulator where different robots share arms from a common platform. The objective is to show the trade-off between the size of the common platform and the kinematics performance of the robot.

Discourse on Knowledge, Dialogue and Diversity: Peasant Worldviews and the Science of Nature Conservation

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-210
Author(s):  
Pramod Parajuli
Keyword(s):  
Nature Conservation ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conservation Strategy ◽  
Human Use ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Compare And Contrast

AbstractThis article suggests that people endowed with an ecosystem operate within their own tradition of knowledge and can offer a useful critique of the increasingly globalised schemes of nature conservation such as parks, sanctuaries and biodiversity preserves. I compare and contrast two competing proposals for nature conservation. While one is the conservation strategy based upon in-farm nurturing of the biodiversity that adheres to the cultural diversity of people residing in an ecosystem, the other is a strategy that excludes the ecosystem people in order to conserve nature. But the contest between the two is not about whether nature should be kept pristine or be made available for human use; it is about the scale of use and the mode of use. It is about who should use, how much, and for what purpose. The debate is also about what kinds of technologies are going to be used in preserving as well as harvesting, using as well as enhancing nature. Ultimately, it is about the very nature of the relationship between human collectivity and non-human collectivity.

Strategic Decisions in the Early Stages of Product Family Design

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. A. Maier ◽  
Georges M. Fadel
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Product Introduction ◽  
Single Product ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Formal Design

Abstract The realization that designing products in families can and does have significant technological and economic advantages over traditional single product design has motivated increasing interest in recent years in formal design tools and methodologies for product family design. However, currently there is no guidance for designers in the first key strategic decisions of product family design, in particular determining the type of product family to design. Hence in this paper, first a taxonomy of different types of product families is presented which consists of seven types of product families, categorized based on number of products and time of product introduction. Next a methodology is introduced to aid designers in determining which type of product family is appropriate, based upon early knowledge about the nature of the intended product(s) and their intended market(s). From this information it also follows both which manufacturing paradigm and which fundamental design strategies are appropriate for the product family. Finally the proposed methodology is illustrated through a case study examining a family of whitewater kayaks.

A Framework for Ontology-Based Heterogeneous Data Integration for Cost Management in Product Family Design

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomeng Chang ◽  
Janis Terpenny
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Heterogeneous Data ◽  
Schema Integration ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Heterogeneous Data Integration ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Semantic Data ◽  
Data Schema

High quality, high impact and economical products and systems are important goals for an enterprise. The usage of product families can be strategic to achieving these goals, yet defining these families can be challenging, requiring the consideration of numerous cost factors. This requires bringing together a great number of heterogeneous data sources of varying formats in a manner that allows the product development team to easily locate and reuse information in a collaborative manner across time and space. To date, our work has focused on the development and use of an Activity-Based Cost ontology (ABC ontology) to guide designers drill down to get at information for product family design. However, this ontology is built in such a way that it can only support information retrieval from the ontology and does not bring together and connect heterogeneous data resources. It does not address the problem of designers who struggle with obtaining relevant details from different departments in an enterprise. While there have been several semantic data schema integration tools for heterogeneous data resources integration, these tools cannot guide users to related information, that would lead to the root cause of the high cost. In this paper, in order to better manage cost in product family design, an ontology-based framework is put forward that builds on our prior work and combines the advantages of ABC ontology and data schema integration tools. The ontology-based framework can guide users to the proper information aspects through querying the central ontology, and give users detailed information about these aspects from heterogeneous data resources with the support of local ontologies. Ultimately, this framework will facilitate designers with better utilization of cost-related factors for product family design from a whole enterprise perspective.

A Product Dissection-Based Methodology to Benchmark Product Family Design Alternatives

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri J. Thevenot ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Manufacturing Cost ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Potential Cost ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Design Alternatives

Today’s companies are pressured to develop platform-based product families to increase variety, while keeping production costs low. Determining why a platform works, and alternatively why it does not, is an important step in the successful implementation of product families and product platforms in any industry. Internal and competitive benchmarking is essential to obtain knowledge of how successful product families are implemented, thus avoiding potential pitfalls of a poor product platform design strategy. While the two fields of product family design and benchmarking have been growing rapidly lately, we have found few tools that combine the two for product family benchmarking. To address this emerging need, we introduce the product family benchmarking method (PFbenchmark) to assess product family design alternatives (PFDAs) based on commonality/variety tradeoff and cost analysis. The proposed method is based on product family dissection, and utilizes the Comprehensive Metric for Commonality developed in previous work to assess the level of commonality and variety in each PFDA, as well as the corresponding manufacturing cost. The method compares not only (1) existing PFDAs but also (2) the potential cost savings and commonality/variety improvement after redesign using two plots—the commonality/variety plot and the cost plot—enabling more effective comparisons across PFDAs. An example of benchmarking of two families of valves is presented to demonstrate the proposed method.

Research of Product Family Design Techniques of one Workpiece Testing Equipment

2012 ◽  
Vol 220-223 ◽  
pp. 626-630
Author(s):  
Ji Tang Zhang ◽  
Peng Cao
Keyword(s):  
Ultrasonic Testing ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Geometric Error ◽  
Testing Equipment ◽  
Automatic Testing ◽  
Geometric Errors ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Manufacturing Costs ◽  
Development Cycle ◽  
Automatic Testing Equipment

One series of cone welding workpiece is a key part of certain critical equipment;we detected the weld quality and geometric error to ensure the high quality. This paper we research the straight weld, the girth weld ultrasonic testing equipment and geometric errors laser automatic testing equipment. Since the testing equipments have a certain degree of correlation, this article also draws on product family design thought, the modular and parametric technique to design the different testing equipments. The kind of design greatly improves the quality, reduces the manufacturing costs, shortens the research and development cycle, receives very nice results.

A Methodology to Support Product Family Redesign Using Genetic Algorithm and Commonality Indices

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri J. Thevenot ◽  
Jyotirmaya Nanda ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Line ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Component Level ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Overall Design ◽  
Family Level ◽  
Systematic Methodology ◽  
Commonality Index

Many of today’s manufacturing companies are using platform-based product development to realize families of products with sufficient variety to meet customers’ demands while keeping costs relatively low. The challenge when designing or redesigning a product family is in resolving the tradeoff between product commonality and distinctiveness. Several methodologies have been proposed to redesign existing product families; however, a problem with most of these methods is that they require a considerable amount of information that is not often readily available, and hence their use has been limited. In this research, we propose a methodology to help designers during product family redesign. This methodology is based on the use of a genetic algorithm and commonality indices - metrics to assess the level of commonality within a product family. Unlike most other research in which the redesign of a product family is the result of many human computations, the proposed methodology reduces human intervention and improves accuracy, repeatability, and robustness of the results. Moreover, it is based on data that is relatively easy to acquire. As an example, a family of computer mice is analyzed using the Product Line Commonality Index. Recommendations are given at the product family level (assessment of the overall design of the product family), and at the component level (which components to redesign and how to redesign them). The methodology provides a systematic methodology for product family redesign.

Product Family Design With Solution Spaces

2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Eichstetter ◽  
Steffen Müller ◽  
Markus Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Monte Carlo Sampling ◽  
Optimal Performance ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Product Families ◽  
System Components ◽  
Vehicle Chassis ◽  
Parameter Values

Design for optimal commonality in product families is different from design for optimal performance. While optimal performance may be achieved by the choice of appropriate design parameter values for all system components, optimal commonality requires a particular scheme of sharing components among systems. The number of possibilities to share components can be quantified by Bell's number and becomes large quickly, thus making optimization extremely expensive. This paper presents an approach to identify components that may be shared in order to optimize commonality for a product family of arbitrary high-dimensional nonlinear systems. Solution spaces are computed for each system using iterative Monte Carlo sampling. On these solution spaces, all design goals are reached. They are expressed as sets of permissible intervals for all design parameters. When parameter intervals from different systems overlap, they may assume the same value and components may be shared. The approach is applied to vehicle chassis design. A set of common components is computed for 13 vehicles with ten design parameters each, such that all design goals are satisfied and the number of different component designs is small.

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