Mass customization' is the buzzword of the current decade. Customers demand products with lower prices, higher quality and faster delivery; yet they also want products customized to match their unique needs. To meet those challenges, manufacturers need to make a paradigm shift and adapt their business model to be compatible with mass customization.
This new paradigm combines mass production's economies of scale with custom manufacturing's flexibility. It allows customers to select, order and receive a custom configured product, often choosing from a multitude of product options. A tool encapsulating this model the configurator is a piece of software that captures customer requirements as input, and then automatically generates custom configured products based on pre-defined product structure and design constraints, while at the same time exactly matching the user's unique needs.
Introduction
Mass production of identical products the business model of many industries is no longer viable for many firms. Customers demand products with lower prices, higher quality and faster delivery; but they also want products customized to match their unique needs. Accordingly, manufacturers are adapting their business models to mass customization, which enables customers to select, order and receive custom-configured products tailored to their specific needs.
A key technology that enables the implementation of mass customization is product configuration. Mass customization means that customers can select, order and receive a specially configured product, often choosing from among hundreds of product options, to meet their specific needs, yet assuring no increase in price.
To implement mass customization successfully, manufacturers need to overcome several major challenges. The time taken to configure products manually is often prohibitive because of the huge number of combinations of different selections that need to be considered before arriving at a valid configuration. In addition, extensive training and expertise are needed in creating configurations of complex products. Further, there is always the possibility of making errors since the final product may involve consideration of thousands of configurable parts. Errors, obviously, can create major slips in schedule and lead to costly iterations in downstream. A product configurator that enables manufacturers to efficiently deliver customized products by automating product configuration processes is one of the key promising technologies in implementing mass customization.
In simple terms, the product configurator is just a software tool that captures customer's requirements as input, and then automatically generates a configured product exactly matching a customer's specific needs, based on pre-defined design constraints. The configuration task can be defined as designing a specific product using a set of pre-defined component types, while taking into account a set of well-defined restrictions on how the component types can be combined. That is, given customer requirements and built-in product descriptions, the configurator will first search from all possible product options and combinations within the restrictions imposed by design constraints, and then generate a valid product configuration exactly matching the customer's specific needs.
An engineer-to-order type of configuration is an extension of this such that, each component type is also associated with a pre-defined set of parameters, where each parameter has a predefined set of possible values to choose from in order to satisfy all constraints among those parameters. The configurator technology will help manufacturers improve their productivity by shortening lead times, by eliminating the possibility of order errors, and by reducing the need for training costs and expertise of the various design and service personnel
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/product-configurators-pave-the-way-for-mass-customization-17039/
This new paradigm combines mass production's economies of scale with custom manufacturing's flexibility. It allows customers to select, order and receive a custom configured product, often choosing from a multitude of product options. A tool encapsulating this model the configurator is a piece of software that captures customer requirements as input, and then automatically generates custom configured products based on pre-defined product structure and design constraints, while at the same time exactly matching the user's unique needs.
Introduction
Mass production of identical products the business model of many industries is no longer viable for many firms. Customers demand products with lower prices, higher quality and faster delivery; but they also want products customized to match their unique needs. Accordingly, manufacturers are adapting their business models to mass customization, which enables customers to select, order and receive custom-configured products tailored to their specific needs.
A key technology that enables the implementation of mass customization is product configuration. Mass customization means that customers can select, order and receive a specially configured product, often choosing from among hundreds of product options, to meet their specific needs, yet assuring no increase in price.
To implement mass customization successfully, manufacturers need to overcome several major challenges. The time taken to configure products manually is often prohibitive because of the huge number of combinations of different selections that need to be considered before arriving at a valid configuration. In addition, extensive training and expertise are needed in creating configurations of complex products. Further, there is always the possibility of making errors since the final product may involve consideration of thousands of configurable parts. Errors, obviously, can create major slips in schedule and lead to costly iterations in downstream. A product configurator that enables manufacturers to efficiently deliver customized products by automating product configuration processes is one of the key promising technologies in implementing mass customization.
In simple terms, the product configurator is just a software tool that captures customer's requirements as input, and then automatically generates a configured product exactly matching a customer's specific needs, based on pre-defined design constraints. The configuration task can be defined as designing a specific product using a set of pre-defined component types, while taking into account a set of well-defined restrictions on how the component types can be combined. That is, given customer requirements and built-in product descriptions, the configurator will first search from all possible product options and combinations within the restrictions imposed by design constraints, and then generate a valid product configuration exactly matching the customer's specific needs.
An engineer-to-order type of configuration is an extension of this such that, each component type is also associated with a pre-defined set of parameters, where each parameter has a predefined set of possible values to choose from in order to satisfy all constraints among those parameters. The configurator technology will help manufacturers improve their productivity by shortening lead times, by eliminating the possibility of order errors, and by reducing the need for training costs and expertise of the various design and service personnel
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/product-configurators-pave-the-way-for-mass-customization-17039/
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