Process platform-based production configuration for mass customization

• Main Author: Zhang, Linda Lianfeng
• Other Authors: Shaligram Pokharel
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Manufacturing::Production management
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/5527
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

A critical issue facing today’s manufacturing companies is to achieve product proliferation while maintaining an economy of scale in production. The consequence of high product variety manifests itself through an exponentially increased number of process variations, which introduces significant constraints to production planning and control and prevents make-to-order systems from building up customization capabilities. Managing product differentiation based on product and process families sharing common platforms has been well recognized as an effective means to deal with such a variety dilemma in many industries. This research proposes systematic methodologies of process platform-based production configuration. The principle is to support production planning in configuring existing operations and processes by exploiting similarity and repetitions inherent in product and process families.