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Article
Modular Product Family Design: Agent-Based Pareto-optimization and Quality Loss Function-Based Post-optimal Analysis
International Journal of Production Research
  • Rahul Rai
  • Venkat Allada, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Abstract

The advent of mass customization and increased manufacturing competition has necessitated that many companies offer platform-oriented multiple product variants. Various design strategies such as Design for Variety and product family design have become critical in this respect. This paper provides a two-step approach to tackle the modular product family design problem. The first step performs a multi-objective optimization using a multi-agent framework to determine the Pareto-design solutions for a given module set. The proposed multi-agent framework is new and has built in flexibility to handle various constraints such as module compatibility during the optimization process. The second step performs post-optimization analysis that includes a novel application of the quality loss function to determine the optimal platform level for a related set of product families and their variants. The proposed method is applied to a product family design example to demonstrate its validity and effectiveness.

Department(s)
Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Sponsor(s)
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
Keywords and Phrases
  • Logistics,
  • Manufacturing Engineering,
  • Manufacturing Industries,
  • Manufacturing Technology,
  • Operations Management,
  • Production Research and Economics,
  • Production Systems,
  • Production Systems and Automation,
  • Productive and Quality Control Management
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2003 Taylor & Francis, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
11-1-2003
Publication Date
01 Nov 2003
Citation Information
Rahul Rai and Venkat Allada. "Modular Product Family Design: Agent-Based Pareto-optimization and Quality Loss Function-Based Post-optimal Analysis" International Journal of Production Research (2003) ISSN: 0020-7543
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/venkat-allada/17/