The recent trend of mass customization has redefined the way companies do business. Each individual customer is now their own market, requiring products specific to their wants and needs at mass production prices. This need for ever-increasing variety is a significant challenge for industry that many times leads to ballooning manufacturing costs and lower product performance. One approach that has received widespread attention and implementation is to develop families of products from standardized product platforms. While, many methods have been developed to address different challenges within product platform design, they are not without their limitations/tradeoffs and therefore leave much room for development and improvement. The Product Platform Constructal Theory Method (PPCTM), developed by Dr. Gabriel Hernandez, is a novel approach for developing product platforms that enable customizable products. Rooted in the tenants of hierarchic systems theory and constructal theory, the PPCTM solves for the product platform as a problem of optimization of access in a geometric space. The result is a hierarchical organization of the modes for managing variety and the specification of their commonality across the product platform. Overall, the PPCTM offers an extremely comprehensive product platform design method, with the ability to accommodate multi-platform design, multiple design specifications, non-uniform demand modeling, and multi-objective decision-making. One limitation of this method is that the selection of platform variables and the modes for managing product variety must be pre-specified or determined ad hoc by the designer. This thesis seeks to address this limitation through the integration of a sensitivity-based analysis method to determine the effect of platform variable variation on the family performance. The result of this work is a Sensitivity-based PPCTM that facilitates the selection of common platform variables, such that modes for managing variety can be ranked and applied to the space element hierarchy. The proposed method is illustrated with three examples: the design of a line of customizable pressure vessels, universal electric motors, and finger pumps.

Abstract In fashion industry, customer demand is constantly changing. One of the main reasons is due to the time of delicate fashion awareness among the consumers, which has come into larger variety and frequent assortment changes. The changing trends in fashion industry allow researchers to get into the postponement strategy as a customized operation in order to focus on quality and flexibility. In today’s fashion market the key for success is to keep an eye on and react to the customer demand. H&M is Europe’s second largest fashion retailer in terms of sales and our work will reflect on H&M supply chain particularly. We try to figure out business strategies such as mass customization and standardization, which H&M is using in their entire supplier chain and in his different processes. Keeping this view in mind, we design our research question, which is about mass customization and standardization and we try to relate these business strategies to the postponement. We try to find out the structure and implementation of these strategies in H&M supply chain with the help of our respondent answers in our proposed questionnaire. For this purpose, an electronic interview with the H&M senior merchandiser in Pakistan liaison office was carried out. The questionnaire contains different questions related to postponement strategy, customization, and standardization and other processes which are used in the supply chain of any fashion industry. The questionnaire consists of 22 major questions. Our research is purely qualitative. We include both types of the data; namely secondary and primary. Secondary data was collected from earlier studies of the literature and related theories of postponement, customization, and standardization and certain areas of fashion retailing, whereas primary data was collected through the electronic interview with Mr. Syed Naqeeb who is working in H&M liaison office as a senior merchandiser in Pakistan. After receiving the questionnaire, we have tried to highlight our research questions with the help of our proposed Frame of Reference in Chapter 2. The Frame of Reference consists of theories which will help the reader to get the clear picture of fashion retailing and the related theories. In the Analysis section, we talk about the activities of H&M and its background followed by its business concept. We define H&M SCM model and draw a figure of H&M complementarities, which we developed by the help of electronic interview. In the Conclusion part, we come to the point that customization and postponement affect fashion retailing by choosing raw material, components, and apparel accessories plus logistic management. The other aspect of our research area is standardization. After the analysis we come to know that Standardization and postponement are also used together in the supply chain of H&M, in raw material, cotton and yarn, dying, packaging and in the care instruction of labels (washing instructions).

The aim of this thesis is to present a new methodology to evaluate and optimize sustainability of customizable product-service systems while ensuring economic, environmental and societal constraints are also satisfied. Activities across the total product lifecycle are considered to develop a model that evaluates closed-loop flow, while being monitored through the growth, maturity and decline stages of the product to provide a comprehensive analysis. A novel method to evaluate the customer satisfaction is also presented. The research considers a modular product where customization can be achieved by selecting from alternatives while ensuring the compatibility between these alternatives. A manufacturer will be able to use the tool developed to optimize the business models developed by maximizing their profitability, satisfying regulatory and customer requirements, and evaluating the metrics that determine the sustainability of the product. The tool primarily uses a Microsoft Excel based platform for calculation and analysis while using ILOG OPL software for optimization. The sensitivity analysis provides examples of the variety of information that can be generated through the model according to the interests of the user. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the tool as a ‘sustainable product configurator’ which can be integrated with conventional product configurators after further refinement.

Artificial neural networks, so far, have not been used for designing modular cells. Therefore, Self-organizing neural network (SONN) is used in the present research to design minicell-based manufacturing system. Two previously developed methods were studied and implemented using SONN model. Results obtained are compared with previous results to analyze the effectiveness of SONN in designing minicells. A new method is then developed with the objective to design minicells more effectively and efficiently. Results of all three methods are compared using machine-count and materialhandling as performance measuring criteria to find out the best method

Manufacturing organizations are facing fragmented markets and increased demand of variety from consumers. As a result, many of these firms have adopted mass customization manufacturing strategies in an effort to offer their customers the freedom of choice while maintaining operational efficiency. Lean manufacturing strategies have also seen heavy use in manufacturing environments. This study investigates the possibilities of integrating lean manufacturing principles and practices into mass customization environments in order to improve system performance. The feasibility of other manufacturing strategies such as agility, Quick Response Manufacturing and the Theory of Constraints assisting in the application of lean manufacturing for mass customization is also explored with the goal of developing a theoretical framework for the application of these manufacturing systems in different types of mass customization environments. The result of these investigations is tested and verified using a real world case study.

Nepalese architectural craft production still relies on traditional hand tools and an ancient process, despite the intense labor and time requirements to produce traditional craft. This thesis examines the underlying issues inherent in the making of traditional crafts, and proposes an integration of modern digital fabrication tools and production processes that support a fast, economical process from design to production and integrating contemporary digital practices in the creation of ornamentation and carvings. / Department of Architecture

The mass customisation manufacturing (MCM) paradigm has created a problem in manufacturing control implementation, as each individual customer has the potential to disrupt the operations of production. The aim of this study was to characterise the manufacturing effects of customers’ decisions in product configuration, in order to research steady state control requirements and work-in-process distributions for effective MCM operations. A research method involving both analytic and empirical reasoning was used in characterising the distributed control environment of manufacturing systems involved in MCM. Sequences of job arrivals into each manufacturing system, due to customers’ decisions in product configuration, were analysed as Bernoulli processes. A customer model based on this analysis captured the correlation in product configuration decisions over time. Closed form analytic models were developed from first principles, which described the steady state behaviour of flow controlled manufacturing systems under generalised clearing policy and uncorrelated job arrival sequences. Empirical analysis of data sets achieved through discrete event simulation was used in adjusting the models to account for more complex cases involving multiple job types and varying correlation. Characteristic response surfaces were shown to exist over the domains of manufacturing system load and job arrival sequence correlation. A novel manufacturing flow control method, termed biased minimum feedback (BMF) was developed. BMF was shown to posses the capability to distribute work-in-process within the entire manufacturing facility through work-in-process regulation at each manufacturing system, so as to increase the performance of downstream assembly stations fed from parallel upstream processing stations. A case study in the production of a configurable product was used in presenting an application for the models and methods developed during this research. The models were shown to be useful in predicting steady state control requirements to increase manufacturing performance. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Universiẗat, Diss--St. Gallen, 2001.

Zugl.: Augsburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

Submitted by MATEUS LEMOS SIMON null (mateus.simon@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-05-21T03:51:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Influência da Complexidade na Eficiência Operacional do Consorcio Modular - FINAL.pdf: 2683320 bytes, checksum: 0df5551d7116f8533bb5bb116893a7d6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Felipe Augusto Arakaki (arakaki@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-05-24T13:53:00Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 simon_ml_me_guara.pdf: 2683320 bytes, checksum: 0df5551d7116f8533bb5bb116893a7d6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-24T13:53:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 simon_ml_me_guara.pdf: 2683320 bytes, checksum: 0df5551d7116f8533bb5bb116893a7d6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-21 / Em busca de competitividade, as montadoras vêm aumentando seu portfólio de produtos para ampliar vendas, mas com isso são desafiados a produzir com maior variedade e maior volume de produção. O gerenciamento das novas peças em conjunto com as antigas aumenta a complexidade do sistema produtivo. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a relação entre complexidade e eficiência operacional em operações de alto volume de produção e alta variedade de produtos, típicas na produção de veículos comerciais como caminhões e ônibus. O estudo é realizado no Consórcio Modular. A Literatura recente evidencia oportunidades de pesquisa para melhor entendimento sobre complexidade como forma de perseguir as necessidades do cliente, oferecer produtos personalizados e lidar com customização em massa sem perder de vista o desempenho operacional. / Pursuing competitiveness, automakers has increased its product portfolio to expand sales, but it is challenged to produce more variety and greater production volumes. The management of new parts increases systems complexity. The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between complexity and operational efficiency in high-volume production and high variety of products, typical in the production of commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses. The study is conducted in the Modular Consortium. The recent literature shows research opportunities for better understanding of complexity in order to pursue the client's needs by offering customized products and deal with mass customization without letting go operational performance.