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Self-configuring components approach to product variant development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2005

MICHELE GERMANI  and
FERRUCCIO MANDORLI
MICHELE GERMANI
Affiliation:
Mechanical Department, Faculty of Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
FERRUCCIO MANDORLI
Affiliation:
Mechanical Department, Faculty of Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131, Via Brecce Bianche, Ancona, Italy
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Abstract

The use of modularity in the design of a new product or the adoption of a product platform, as the base to define new solutions within a product family, offers the company a chance to meet diverse customer needs at low cost because of economies of scale in all phases of the product's life cycle. At present, the concept of modularity in product design is becoming widely used in many industries such as automobiles and consumer electronics. However, if modularity and mass customization have attracted the interest of industries and researchers, the greatest efforts have been focused on the theoretical aspect whereas the related design support technologies have been only partially implemented. In this context, our intent is to develop highly reusable models, which are able to reconfigure themselves on the basis of new functional requirements. The proposed approach is based on the definition of what we call self-configuring components and multiple-level functions. To describe the approach, a practical example related to the design of modules for woodworking machines is reported.

Keywords

Feature-Based ModelFunctional AnalysisProduct Configuration
Type
Research Article
Information
AI EDAM , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , February 2004 , pp. 41 - 54
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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