Product platform design for minimum cost in mass customization manufacturing environment

Abstract

Nowadays manufacturers are facing several challenges to compete in the marketplace. One of the main challenges can be described by the need to offer a range of products and categories in addition to shortening the time during which the product is brought to the customer while maintaining low costs to achieve maximum profitability. Several approaches emerged during the past couple of decades that enabled designers and manufacturers to offer the product variety within a product family on one hand and allowing flexibility and responsiveness at the manufacturer’s side on the other hand. This study addressed the problem of product platform design with the objective of minimizing the manufacturing costs incurred in the platform manufacturing phase and the mass customization phase. A genetic algorithm model that minimizes the total manufacturing cost is developed where optimum product platform design is determined. The developed model is used to study the effect of demand proportion of different product variants within a product family on the platform design and the total manufacturing cost.