Improving product design phase for engineer to order (ETO) product with knowledge base engineering (KBE)

In industry currently Computer Aided Design (CAD) is an important tool for the modification, analysis, or optimization of the 3D virtual environment that replicates the physical product. CAD software is an efficient and reliable tool. However, as globalization increases customer demands, this process needs to be faster and more efficient to accommodate changing product design situations, especially for Engineer-to- Order (ETO) products. ^ The traditional method of product design process is to operate CAD software without argumentation. Design engineers create CAD prototypes and drawings based on available knowledge and information which comes from engineering experts, company standards, industrial practices as well as other sources. Research has shown that 80% of knowledge is not captured in the system. It can be time consuming for the design engineer to provide an accurate and consistent virtual product. Researchers have found that the traditional method is unreliable, inaccurate and inefficient. There is room for improvement in the product design situation for ETO products. There is a need to develop a design method that is faster and reduces costs. ^ Knowledge Base Engineering (KBE) is an alternative system that is built to capture and reuse knowledge. KBE technology is well known for reducing lead-time and design errors using automation. Through integrating KBE technology with CAD software, design engineers create virtual product configurations by applying a scripting language to the CAD model. It requires time and effort invested in a different way than traditional design method, which may cost more to develop. However it is more efficient and accurate when producing multiple configurations. ^ This research experiment is to define a better design method for the ETO product situation by comparing the traditional design method with the KBE/CAD integration method. The research question is Is the Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) integration design approach more efficient for the reduction of lead time and design error than the traditional method for Engineering-to- Order (ETO) product situations

Parametric and Generative Design Techniques for Mass-Customization in Building Industry: A Case Study for Glued-Laminated Timber ☆

Abstract According to Wortmann classification, the Building Industry (BI) can be defined as engineer-to-order (ETO) industry: the engineering-process starts only when an order is acquired. This definition implies that every final product (building) is almost unique, and processes cannot be easily standardized or automated. For this reason, the Building Industry is one of the less efficient industries today, and the productivity gap with other industries is growing faster. Since the 1940s, prefabrication and standardization of entire buildings or of complex components are effective strategies to push BI from an ETO industry towards an assembly-to-order industry (ATO). Although, prefabrication and standardization strategies provide effective solutions to improve process efficiency, they are not widespread adopted. The reason for this poor success can be identified in limits of customization that afflicts prefabricated and standardized products, which do not satisfy completely the needs usually delivered by customers. This paper presents a research activity aiming at enhancing Mass-Customization capabilities in the BI through Parametric and Generative design techniques in frontend activities of the value-chain system. Referring to a case study for Glued-Laminated Timber (GLT) products, a parametric algorithm has been programmed in order to satisfy two specific design intents: reducing the usage of unneeded high-quality raw material in final products and facilitating the manufacturing process of complex products, such as doubled-curved ones. Crossing capabilities of the parametric algorithm in Digital Fabrication strategies and capabilities of a standard production system of GLT, authors discuss whether Parametric and Generative Design techniques may enhance Mass-Customization capabilities in the BI, pushing the whole production system towards more efficient processes

Profitability of Mass Customization in Electrical Motor Manufacturing : Does Customization Improve Product Level Profitability

The current market environment forces manufacturing companies to produce such customized products that are at the same time relatively cheap and finished with top quality to respond demanding requirements of customers. The concept of mass customization has been presented as a solution that offers economies of scale while producing customer tailored products. The aim of this research is to review the impact of mass customization on product level profitability in complex manufacturing environment. The theoretical framework is constructed on the main themes of mass customization, cost accounting, and product profitability analysis. All these mentioned topic areas are reviewed from the viewpoint of a manufacturing company that produces large variety of customized products with different order fulfillment methods. The research problem is divided into two separate questions of evaluating available product costing systems in complex manufacturing environment, and seeking evidence if mass customization is profitable in the case company that for this research is made as an assignment. Based on previous research, financial effects of mass customization are not sufficiently studied through empirical research. Furthermore, related research focuses mostly on product configurations and modules, and their effect on operative and technical development instead of financial measures. The empirical section of this research is conducted as a quantitative single-case study that aims to seek evidence if mass customization of electric motors is profitable for the case company. Operative data is collected from the case company’s ERP-system, and it is combined with financial information. This constructed data set is used for performing statistical analysis similar to methods that are applied in econometrics. The collected data set consists of 3900 statistical units thereby constructing a representative sample from the population. The findings show that mass customization is profitable for the case company when customization is measured through customer selected and otherwise optional variant codes, and by comparing profitability levels in between of different engineering groups. As a results, it was discovered that more customized statistical units were seen to be more profitable than those less customized units. This research contributes filling the recognized research gap of lacking empirical studies related to financial effects of mass customization. In addition, it also presents important information for the case company regarding of how different variant codes and engineering groups affect product level profitability in their manufacturing operations. Furthermore, the presented statistical method offers possibility to analyze and estimate how different product features influence product profitability levels based on statistical methods commonly used in econometrics. Therefore, this research can be seen to have central managerial and practical implications within management accounting practices in manufacturing environments.Kiristyvä kilpailutilanne markkinoilla sekä vaatimukset räätälöidyistä tuotteista ajavat yrityksiä tarjoamaan asiakaskohtaisia tuotteita saavuttaakseen kilpailuetua muihin kilpailijoihin nähden. Joustavan tuotevalikoiman lisäksi, asiakkaat odottavat samanaikaisesti edullisia hintoja, nopeita toimitusaikoja sekä hyvää laatua tuotteilta. Massakustomoinnin on esitetty tarjoavan mahdollisuuden hyödyntää suuruuden ekonomiaa samalla tarjoten asiakaskohtaisesti valmistettuja tuotteita, jotka täyttävät asiakkaiden erityiset vaatimukset. Tämän tutkimus tarkastelee massakustomoinnin vaikutusta tuotekohtaiseen kannattavuuteen korkean teknologian teollisuusympäristössä. Tutkimuksessa esitetty teoreettinen viitekehys muodostuu massakustomoinnin, kustannuslaskennan sekä kannattavuusanalyysin aihealueista, joita tarkastellaan erityisesti valmistavan tuotannon näkökulmasta. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on luoda eheä kokonaisuus yhdistäen näitä mainittuja tutkimusaiheita sekä konkretisoida kustomoinnin taloudellisia vaikutuksia empiirisen tutkimuksen avulla. Tutkielman tutkimusongelma on jaettu kahteen erilliseen tutkimuskysymykseen. Ensimmäinen tutkimuskysymys tarkastelee kustannuslaskennan mahdollisuuksia tuotekustannusten määrittämiseksi ympäristössä, jossa tuotteiden määrä on suuri sekä valmistus monivaiheista. Toinen tutkimuskysymyksistä käsittelee massakustomoinnin vaikutusta kannattavuuteen kohdeyrityksessä. Aikaisempi tutkimus tunnistaa puutteet aikaisemmassa empiirisessä tutkimuksessa liittyen massakustomoinnin taloudelliseen vaikutuksiin sen keskittyessä yleisesti kustomoinnin operatiiviseen järjestämiseen sekä kehittämiseen tuotekonfigurointien ja -moduulien avulla. Tämän tutkielman empiirinen tutkimus on muodostettu hyödyntäen kvantitatiivista yksittäistapaustutkimusta, jonka tarkoituksena on tutkia tilastollisia menetelmiä hyödyntäen, miten massakustomointi vaikuttaa tuotekannattavuuteen kohdeyrityksen yhdessä tuote- ja kokokategoriassa. Aineisto on kerätty kohdeyrityksen toiminnanohjausjärjestelmästä sekä taloudellisista raporteista, joista on muodostettu yhtenäinen havaintoaineisto. Koottu havaintoaineisto muodostuu yhteensä 3900 havaintoyksiköstä, joiden voidaan nähdä kuvastavan yleistä tilannetta valitussa tapauksessa. Tulokset osoittavat, että massakustomointi parantaa keskimäärin kohdeyrityksen tuotteiden kannattavuutta, kun kustomoinnin mittana käytetään asiakkaiden valitsemien tuoteoptioiden määrää sekä insinööriprosessin muotoa. Tutkielma osallistuu tunnistetun tutkimusaukon täyttämiseen esittämällä empiirisiä tuloksia kustomoinnin taloudellisista vaikutuksista. Esitelty tilastollinen menetelmä esittää tavan yhdistää kustannuslaskentaa, kannattavuuden analysointia sekä tilastollisia menetelmiä johdon laskentatoimen menetelminä myös muilla massakustomointia hyödyntävillä teollisuudenaloilla lisäten tutkielman hyödyntämisen mahdollisuutta käytännön sekä liikkeenjohdon keinona

Three Fundamental Trade-offs in Expanding Sustainable Distributions of Manufacturing

The background of the research is the trend towards more inclusive manufacturing. This includes all levels of technologies to enable more diverse geographic and demographic distributions of manufacturing, which can improve ecological and social sustainability. Expanding distributions of manufacturing is of interest to governments, companies, communities and individuals. Interest among government and companies relates to manufacturing being re-shored and redistributed. Interest among communities and individuals is in people having more involvement in the production of what they consume: i.e. prosumption. Expansion of geographic distributions has potential to increase ecological sustainability, for example, by reducing long-distance transportation. Expansion of demographic distributions has potential to increase social sustainability, for example, by increasing the diversity of people involved in manufacturing. The dissertation addresses three research gaps concerned with sustainable distributed manufacturing. In particular, the fundamental challenges of three manufacturing trade-offs are addressed as follows: product originality, product complexity, and product unsustainability versus sustainable distributed manufacturing. There are three main findings from the research. First, technological advances enable expansion of sustainable distributed manufacturing of original products, if the products are small simple original products rather than large complicated original products. Second, technological advances enable sustainable distributed manufacturing of products that are more complex than could otherwise be made far from manufacturing infrastructures, but which nonetheless are not the most complex products. Third, technological advances enable more sustainable distributed production of products with unsustainable features, if technological advances are applied also to some existing distributions of manufacturing. Consideration of these three main findings and three further findings, suggests two complementary strategies for expanding sustainable manufacturing distributions: trade-off reduction and trade-off avoidance. Overall, the research is novel through its inclusion of diverse technologies and distributions of manufacturing in order to determine their relative potential to improve the production of physical goods at more diverse locations by more diverse people

A CASE STUDY INVESTIGATING RULE BASED DESIGN IN AN INDUSTRIAL SETTING

This thesis presents a case study on the implementation of a rule based design (RBD) process for an engineer-to-order (ETO) company. The time taken for programming and challenges associated with this process are documented in order to understand the benefits and limitations of RBD. These times are obtained while developing RBD programs for grid assemblies of bottle packaging machines that are designed and manufactured by Hartness International (HI). In this project, commercially available computer-aided design (CAD) and RBD software are integrated to capture the design and manufacturing knowledge used to automate the grid design process of HI. The stages involved in RBD automation are identified as CAD modeling, knowledge acquisition, capturing parameters, RBD programming, debugging, and testing, and production deployment. The stages and associated times in RBD program development process are recorded for eighteen different grid products. Empirical models are developed to predict development times of RBD program, specifically enabling HI to estimate their return on investment. The models are demonstrated for an additional grid product where the predicted time is compared to actual RBD program time, falling within 20% of each other. This builds confidence in the accuracy of the models. Modeling guidelines for preparing CAD models are also presented to help in RBD program development. An important observation from this case study is that a majority of the time is spent capturing information about product during the knowledge acquisition stage, where the programmer\u27s development of a RBD program is dependent upon the designer\u27s product knowledge. Finally, refining these models to include other factors such as time for building CAD models, programmers experience with the RBD software (learning curve), and finally extending these models to other product domains are identified possible areas of future work

Industrialized construction - explorations of current practice and opportunities

Industrialized construction has over the years taken different expressions and gone through different phases depending on where inspiration has come from. In this project, industrialized construction has been studied in two applications: timber house manufacturing and renovation of multi-family houses. In Sweden industrialized production of timber houses is relatively strong in the housing sector, it however resides somewhere between industrial production and the traditional construction sector, which has led to some ambivalence. IT support and product documentation largely reflects the traditional construction sector, which means that they find it difficult to use the potential of industrialized construction in full. The efficiency of production of timber houses could be improved by more effective use of IT support, as well as better coherence between internal processes and the business model. Further, they need to consider how to document products in an industrialized context. These changes will inevitably have an impact on how they are organized and would require new or changed processes. It will also have an impact on how product documentation can be used. In Sweden there are strong property owners who are able to take an active role in industrialized construction if they were provided with the right knowledge and tools. An increasingly interesting sub-sector of construction is the renovation of multi-family houses, today investment in renovation is larger than in new construction. The renovation need in multi-family houses in Sweden, as well as in the rest of Europe, is large. How it will be financed and implemented is a problem that many property owners struggle with and different strategies have been used. For example pipe renovation is a major and costly action and many buildings are in great need. Several Swedish property owners can altogether show volumes over 1000 bathrooms per year in renovation and new construction, this could justify investments in industrialized strategies. A case study company in the research project has adopted an approach that standardizes pipe renovation to a limited number of solutions. This can be seen as a first step of an industrial strategy. For further industrialization, clients need to implement a comprehensive approach to the development and standardization of solutions, as well as ensuring better control of processes for implementing pipe renovation projects. The effort to create industrialized strategies is not unattainable, but it requires investments and expertise that property owners today typically do not have. If property owners would act as concept owners for industrialized platforms for renovation and new construction, it has the potential to create a new market