Adaptive Design Customization for Mass Customization: a Framework

Customizable designs are a fundamental research topic concerning the mass customization community. For successful customization of products, customizable product design architecture is important. Various design theories like modularity drivers (Ericsson/Erixon,1999), design axiom principles (Suh,1990) ,design family architecture(Nayak/Chen/Simpson,2002) and portfolio architecture(Yu/Zugasti/Otto,1999), are being adapted to improve the customizability of designs. A product design architecture identified for customization has to then offer the product design parameters, which can be customized. Other design parameters are then synthesized from these inputs. Identifying customizable parameters for product design architecture is a complex task, due to correlation of various design parameters. In this paper, first a design parameter classification scheme is proposed based on customizability of parameters. The classification aids in selecting the possible customizable parameters for a product platform. Further, adaptive design customization, which relates most design parameters with the scalable platform design parameters using matrix formulation, is discussed. The proposed design parameter classification and adaptive synthesis of design parameters is applied to a spring design example. 2