Graph Grammar Based Product Family Modeling

: Many industries are shifting from mass production to mass customization, which demands quick response to the needs of individual customers with high quality and low costs. The development of product families has received an increasing interest in recent years because, by sharing components across products, a family of products can be derived to cater variety while maintaining the economy of scale. Aiming at the computerization, and eventual automation, of product family design, this paper tackles the formal representation issue surrounding this economically important class of engineering design problem. Breaking free from conventional understanding of product families, which is limited as shared components, the paper defines a product family as a structured system to create variety of products with shared core product technologies. It not only involves the shared base product, but also encompasses customization modules, standard designs, and primary patterns of variety to generate cu...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: CERA
• Authors: Xuehong Du, Jianxin Jiao, Mitchell M. Tseng
• Keywords: CERA 2002, Graph Grammar, Product Families, Product Family