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Given the latest progress in research and technology, achieving the seamless co-development of products and manufacturing systems seems rather undemanding. While a straightforward solution to this challenge is not in fact in sight, numerous ideas exist and are being pursued, both in industry and academia. One of these is to base the development of...
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The purpose of this note is to report on the recent work [2, 3], where new structural optimization strategies are proposed so that the optimized designs are free of overhang regions, which jeopardize their constructibility by additive manufacturing technologies. After showing numerical evidence that the intuitive angle-based criteria alone are insu...
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... In so doing there is a need to, not only consider the upcoming product generation but also mitigate possible future change needs in a better way. Previously, several scholars have addressed the symbiotic relationship between product and production development and proposed methods and tools to enable coevolution related to product and production platforms, e.g., Sørensen et al. [10] and Michaelis et al. [11], portfolio planning in product and production development [7], and through changeable and reconfigurable production development [12]. Even so, recent studies indicate a need for industrial practices for proactive support for long-term production development [13]. ...
The traditional way of developing production systems is often limited by merely considering an imminent new product. The longevity of a production system’s lifecycle is at risk following this approach and may create a focus on the current functionality and capacity rather than on fulfilling future product requirements. Changeable production address this challenge, however, support for production engineers to consider more changeable solutions is lacking. Thus, this paper proposes support for evaluating production capabilities and mapping how new products may impact the production system. The support is developed in two industrial cases which studied current production capabilities and future requirements put on two automatic assembly lines. The support allows for estimates of the cost of repurposing the assembly lines to accommodate the new products and paves the way for seeing beyond the dedicated manufacturing paradigm towards increased levels of changeable production.KeywordsPlatformChangeabilityProduct and production developmentProduction development
... Within the production domain, several authors have conducted research on production platforms. Michaelis and Johannesson (2011) used function-means modelling of platforms in both the product and production domains to create a modular and configurable robotic welding cell. Sorensen (2019) developed a classification coding system of production solutions to identify which aspects could remain stable and which could vary over time. ...
... Due to this, several similar terms are used. For example, the terminologies used are production platform (Bejlegaard et al., 2016;Nielsen, 2010;, production platform philosophy (Lager, 2017), process platform (Halman et al., 2003;Jiao et al., 2005; L. L. , process parameter platform (Williams et al., 2007), manufacturing 14 platform (Joergensen, 2013;Michaelis & Johannesson, 2011), manufacturing system platform (ElMaraghy & Abbas, 2015) and fixture platform . The ways in which the different authors have described platforms in the production domain are shown in Table 2-1. ...
With shrinking product life cycles and increasing competitive pressure, the traditional way of developing production systems is becoming obsolete. A longer-term perspective that considers the stream of product realisation projects to be implemented in the production system over its lifetime is required. Because of the success of different platform strategies in the product domain, platforms in the production domain are deemed a viable avenue for exploration to reach longevity in production capabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to support a long-term view of production development through production platforms. This aim is addressed through two research questions (RQs). RQ1 is ‘What challenges and enablers exist for long-term production development?’ and should identify hindrances and good practices towards reaching long-term production development. RQ2 is ‘How can a platform approach support long-term production development?’ and describes how a platform approach for long-term production development could be. Four studies were conducted and reported in the four appended papers. The research is based on an interactive research approach with three empirically-based studies and one systematic literature review. The findings indicate that production development is conducted from a short-term perspective. Several challenges were identified regarding long-term production development, as well as the fact that the use of production platforms is not applied in industry. Further, the production platform literature is found to be still rather limited but it has been concluded that production platforms are an approach to describe the production system and its assets to facilitate reuse. Support for achieving long-term production development is presented, including production capability mapping (PCM) support. PCM support enables platform descriptions to be generated and used as a foundation in long-term production development to create a production system that possesses a higher ability to absorb changes.
... The platform approach is commonly used in the product domain, but is relatively new within the production domain, lacking an established common definition, nor is a well-known concept within the industry [23]. Yet, three levels of abstractions could be used to distinguish different types of platforms in both product and production domain [24], where the low level, is composed of the physical embodiment of the product or manufacturing system. Medium level is the product and production system concepts and functions. ...
The product realisation process is one of several formalized supports for industrial actors to excel in concurrent engineering procedures. To satisfy customers today mass customization is increasingly in need, requiring delicate modular architectures, both in product designs and production. Emerging is also the digitalized co-platforming era of automating the synchronization of product and production platforms. Yet, in all these processes, humans as agents have different roles, objectives, and mental models that governs their decision-making, being the bearer of separate ideas on what to optimize from their end. In product development large sensitivity is given to customer demands and trends to design attractive products, while less attention may be placed on evaluating the increase of variation into the production flows from new products, potentially increasing the workload and complexity of assembly systems, as well as, the subsequent material logistics. In production, much effort is invested to increase standardization, increase the pace, and minimize the manufacturing cost, with the objective to minimize required changes to the current production system. Consequently, it is a hard problem to satisfy all criteria at once, and how to solve it has no clear answer. Therefore, this study has applied qualitative System Dynamics modelling, also often referred to as systems thinking, to investigate how these opposing views were represented at an industrialized house builder. The purpose was to explore and model the perspectives and mental models of two leading roles to model their conflicting objectives. As a result, an overall model of main interactions of product and production development is proposed to support interpreting the findings, visualize the identified conflicting dynamics, and work as a vehicle for analysis.
... Whereas a vast body of research concerns product platforms only little research concerns production platforms. However, research on production platforms has been conducted by for example Michaelis and Johannesson (2011) who suggest using functions and means to model production systems; however, the way production resources are modeled relates more to what production operations are intended to accomplish, rather than what the resources are designed to do. What production operations are intended to accomplish can be accommodated in a process platform. ...
To meet a wide range of customer needs, a variety of product concepts can be modeled employing a platform approach. Whereas frequent market changes can be accommodated by dynamically modifying product concepts in iterations, capabilities in production are seldom well incorporated as part of design iterations. In this paper, a dynamic platform modeling approach that supports concurrent product-production reconfiguration is presented. The approach builds on Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) processes and a function modeling technique is used to represent product-production variety streams inherent in a production operation model. To demonstrate the approach, a comprehensive case from the aerospace industry is presented. Conceptual representations of a set of aero engine sub-systems and a variety of welding configurations, including their inherent constraints, are mutually modeled and assessed. The results show that a set of product-production alternatives can be dynamically controlled by integrating product-production constraints using a production operation model. Following SBCE processes, inferior alternatives can be put aside until new information becomes available and a new set of alternatives can be reconfigured. The dynamics and concurrency of the approach can potentially reduce the risk of late and costly modifications that propagate from design to production.
... meetings, issue escalation). (Harmel et al., 2006), b (Parslov and Mortensen, 2015), c (Clark and Paolucci, 2001), d (Coronado Mondragon and Coronado Mondragon, 2018), e (Richter et al., 2016), f (Fixson, 2006), g (Michaelis and Johannesson, 2011), h (Batchelor, 2006), i (Lundbäck, 2002), j (Daaboul et al., 2011), k (Clarkson et al., 2004), l (Scheidemann, 2006) ...
Platform design has been firmly established in the automotive industry as a strategy to provide wider product variety while maintaining cost effective production. But this strategy can struggle to keep up with the pace and nature of emerging technologies. This paper reviews the existing approaches to modelling product platforms, and showcases the challenges at OEMs introducing new technological innovations in their platforms. A gap is identified in the methods to assess the ability of existing platforms to integrate new technologies whenever they become available.
... Although variety traditionally concerns products through the eyeglasses of marketing, engineering, and distribution, variety in production exist too. Several concepts akin to variety in production have been proposed: such as Cellular Manufacturing (CM) (Choobineh, 1988), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) (Browne et al., 1984;ElMaraghy, 2005), Modular Production Systems (MPS) (Rogers and Bottaci, 1997), Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) (Koren et al., 1999;Koren et al., 2016), Agile Manufacturing Systems (AMS) (Gunasekaran, 1999), Generic-Bill-of-Materials-and-Operations (GBOMO) (Jiao et al., 2000), process platforms (Jiao et al., 2007a), manufacturing platforms (Michaelis and Johannesson, 2011). Based on the definition of product platforms by Robertson and Ulrich (1998), a platform of technical systems can be defined as a collection of assets that are shared and reused among a set of technical systems. ...
... Main reference: (Michaelis and Johannesson, 2011) ...
Variety traditionally denotes products that serve a wide range of customer needs. However, variety in production exists too. Like products, production processes and production resources may also embody variety to serve the production fulfillment of a product variety. In this paper, product variety and variety in production are described and contrasted through a literature review. The aim is to serve the engineering design community with an elevated perspective of variety in production and its relation to product variety.
... Manufacturing platforms in various forms are discussed by [10] as well as [11]. The former uses modularization of the product and the manufacturing system as a way to increase the efficiency of development and manufacturing. ...
... Thereafter, RD&T simulates the weld operation using the robot paths, CAD models and welding process parameters (10). The weld qualities are sent back to CCM (11) for use in the producibility assessment. Based on the collected information, designs that are inferior in terms of producibility can be eliminated. ...
Product platforms have proven efficient as a means to reduce lead-time and increase product quality simultaneously. When using platforms to generate a family of products, the number of variants that need to be managed in manufacturing increases. To succeed with this, the manufacturing system needs to be maintained in a similar level of flexibility as the product platform. However, there is seldom a joint decision behind each and every conceptual product variant during development, regarding capability in manufacturing. For example, when considering producibility, some product variants require better tolerances than what the manufacturing processes can deliver. This uncertainty can be reduced, by making producibility analyses of a set of conceptual product variants. By performing several different analyses, knowledge can be gained, and joint decisions can be made about cross product-manufacturing aspects. The activities can be systematically arranged to gradually eliminate unfeasible conceptual product variants. In this paper we show how an integrated PLM architecture can be used to create sufficient knowledge as a basis for joint product and manufacturing decisions. The utmost company benefit of this is to reduce lead-time by taking manufacturing capability into account when developing product families.
... Increasing frequency in the introduction of new products Large fluctuations in product demand and mix Design changes in parts of existing products Changes in government regulations Changes in process technology Globalization as well as unexpected and frequent market changes drives the need for a flexible product architecture. In light of these market changes, companies can adopt and mix different strategies: exclude a changing market, plan for change, and increase responsiveness to change 11 . It is thoroughly argued that a precocious product architecture plan is critical for platform-based products, yet such a plan is seldom developed 2 . ...
This research investigates the phenomenon of increasing cost that results from growing product complexity. To explore this phenomenon, interviews with ten senior managers and engineers with long experience in the automotive business were conducted at a car manufacturer. The interviewees agreed that configuring cars becomes more time-consuming and costly with increasing product complexity. In this paper we reason that there are upcoming solutions suitable for complex configurations. As a basis for this, we propose a distinction between limiting and managing product complexity, and stress that these approaches affect internal cost over time differently. If companies choose to limit complexity we suggest optimizing configuration rules, reducing variants or both. Conversely, we propose and contrast two different configuration strategies for managing complexity, 1) the Modular approach, and 2) the Configurable Component (CC) approach. The Modular approach may limit the ability to change. However, only few changes in manufacturing systems are needed. The CC approach is a long-term fully flexible configuration approach prepared for changes. As a drawback, the CC approach may involve high fixed costs due to the need for suitable manufacturing systems. We conclude that both the Modular approach and the CC approach are feasible for managing complexity. In a long-term perspective, it might be necessary to be able to prepare for change and reduce internal cost over time. The choice of limiting or managing complexity might therefore be a demarcation of future competitiveness.
... To allow for variants and reuse of knowledge and system solutions, the creation of platforms and robust product architectures is becoming more and more important. The platform concept can be utilized for the product but also for the manufacturing system that realizes the product (Michaelis and Johannesson 2011). Very often the manufacturing system is designed to handle a variety of product variants. ...
In aerospace engine industry, large casted components are, because of sustainability considerations, being replaced by smaller parts that are welded together. This reduces weight because some parts can be made of lighter material. It also opens up for use of platforms. The division of a large component into smaller parts is called form division. The form division affects the geometrical robustness in the weld splitlines between the parts and thereby the weldability. By optimizing the robustness in weld splitlines, conditions for welding can be improved. A greedy algorithm for weld splitline division is described and exemplified on aerospace case studies.
... Lastly, product and manufacturing system variety can be expressed by alternative solutions and components. On reflection, this opens the door to integrating platform thinking in the product domain with similar mindsets in the manufacturing domain [40], thus enabling integrated development of configurable product and manufacturing system platforms. ...
Manufacturing companies face increasingly tougher individual customer requirements that force them to revise conceptual solutions for the redesigning of products. This situation limits the reuse of ready-made components and requires physical changes to the manufacturing system. In these settings, platforms must be prepared with greater flexibility to allow development over time. The corresponding platform models need to include conceptual considerations for products and manufacturing systems. The literature advocates functional modeling to capture these considerations but applies it separately to either the product domain or to the manufacturing domain. Further, its relationship to manufacturing processes is not expounded. Thus, functional modeling falls short of its potential to facilitate the integrated development of products and manufacturing systems.
This paper puts forth an integrated platform model using functional modeling to capture the conceptual considerations for products and manufacturing systems together with the manufacturing processes. The model is tested for consistency and then illustrated by studying a real case example from the automotive industry modeled according to the approach suggested. The example shows that the model facilitates an understanding of the design of products and their manufacturing systems, including functions shared across domains and across lifecycle phases. Thus, the model is proposed for the conceptual phase of designing, aimed at reusing and redesigning components, machinery, manufacturing processes and design solutions.
