The Product Family Reasoning System: Design Methods for Enabling Product Variety

这项研究要解决的问题是如何帮助设计师从一个共同的基础上设计几个相关的产品。这个问题有两个方面：(1)如何为一个产品族设计公共平台；(2)如何综合和推理公共平台所能支持的多样性。提出了一种产品族推理系统(PFRS)，为确定合适的公共产品族平台和综合所提议的产品族中的单个产品提供计算基础。提出的方法是研究离散数学在产品族中平台和产品的配置设计中的应用。配置设计涉及识别设计中的哪些组件以及这些组件之间应该存在哪些关系。由于离散数学处理对象及其关系的研究，因此它是研究配置设计、平台通用化和产品族设计的适当基础。此外，基于决策的设计领域将指导这项研究，以确保设计决策得到适当的制定和做出。汽车平台设计将是该项目的主要应用领域。这项研究的预期结果包括一种新的产品族设计方法，该方法将考虑产品和工艺方面，以及设计产品族中的公共平台和产品的计算方法。这项研究的潜在新发现包括配置设计的离散数学基础，合成产品平台和产品的算法，以及能够在产品架构选择之间进行权衡的设计方法。这些发现的意义包括指导设计师合理化产品系列平台。这种指导包括在设计过程中适当考虑产品和组装设施的能力，以及在可能的竞争目标中根据偏好做出适当决定的机会。

The problem to be addressed in this research is how to assist designers in designing several related products from a common base. This problem has two aspects: (1) how to design common platforms for a family of products, and (2) how to synthesize and reason about the variety that can be supported from the common platform. A Product Family Reasoning System (PFRS) is proposed to provide the computational foundation for determining suitable common product family platforms and synthesizing individual products within a proposed family. The proposed approach is to study the application of discrete mathematics to the configuration design of platforms and products within a product family. Configuration design involves the identification of which components are in a design and which relationships should exist among these components. Since discrete mathematics deals with the study of objects and their relationships, it is an appropriate foundation for studying configuration design, platform commonization, and product family design. Additionally, the area of decision-based design will guide this research to ensure that design decisions are properly formulated and made. Automobile platform design will be the primary application area for this project. Expected results of this research include a new product family design approach that will consider product and process aspects, and computational methods for designing common platforms and products within a product family. Potential new discoveries from this research include a discrete mathematical foundation for configuration design, algorithms for synthesizing product platforms and products, and design methods that enable trade-offs among product architecture choices to be evaluated. The significance of these discoveries includes guidance to designers on rationalizing product family platforms. Such guidance involves the appropriate consideration of product and assembly facility capabilities during design, and the opportunity to make appropriate decisions given preferences among possibly competing objectives.