Process Planning, Scheduling, and Layout Optimization for Multi-Unit Mass-Customized Products in Sustainable Reconfigurable Manufacturing System

Currently, manufacturers seek to provide customized and sustainable products, requiring flexible manufacturing systems and advanced production management to cope with customization complexity and improve environmental performance. The reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is expected to provide cost-effective customization in high responsiveness. However, reconfiguration optimization to produce sustainable mass-customized products in RMS is a complex problem requiring multi-criteria decision making. It is related to three problems, process planning, scheduling, and layout optimization, which should be integrated to optimize the RMS performance. This paper aims at integrating the above three problems and developing an effective approach to solving them concurrently. It formulates a multi-objective mathematical model simultaneously optimizing process planning, job-shop scheduling, and open-field layout problem to improve RMS sustainability. The penalty for product tardiness, the total manufacturing cost, the hazardous waste, and the greenhouse gases emissions are minimized. Economic and environmental indicators are defined to modify the Pareto efficiency when searching the Pareto-optimal solutions. Exact Pareto-optimal solutions are obtained by brute-force search and compared with those of the non-environmental indicator model. NSGA-III is adopted to obtain the approximate Pareto-optimal solutions in high effectiveness and efficiency. A small numerical example is applied to validate the mathematical model and resolution methods.

ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT IN THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX WITH A CUSTOMIZED LINE OF CIVILIAN PRODUCTS

Статья посвящена рассмотрению вопросов экономического управления компанией, входящей в состав отечественного оборонно-промышленного комплекса и перешедшей в порядке диверсификации на производство гражданской продукции. Целью исследования является синтез системы экономического управления, обеспечивающей регулирование бизнес-процессов компании в сквозном производственном цикле создания продукции, подлежащей потребительской кастомизации, и продукции с фиксированными потребительскими свойствами. Кастомизируемая продукция изготавливается в интересах гражданского заказчика, представленного на рынке бизнес-партнерами и потребительским сообществом. Некастомизируемая продукция изготавливается в интересах государственного заказчика по предварительно согласованному проекту с фиксированными свойствами продукта. Управление компанией реализуется путем внутрифирменного регулирования бизнес-процессов и бизнес-проектов, формирующих денежные и товарные потоки. Предложена схема системы сквозного экономического управления компанией, осуществляющей одновременный выпуск продукции, подлежащей и не подлежащей потребительской кастомизации. Научная новизна полученных результатов заключается в реализации инновационного способа комплементарного экономического управления компанией, основанного на совмещении управленческих воздействий топ-менеджмента компании и воздействий искусственного интеллекта. Качество управления оценивается по системе показателей, заложенных в финансовый план компании. Регулирование осуществляется в непрерывном цикле для минимизации отклонений наблюдаемых и запланированных показателей. Наряду с коммерческой результативностью бизнеса отслеживаются и проектные характеристики, заданные потребителем при кастомизации продукции. The article is devoted to the economic management of a company that is part of the domestic military-industrial complex and has switched to the production of civilian products in order to diversify. The purpose of the research is to synthesize an economic management system that ensures the regulation of the company's business processes in the end-to-end production cycle of creating products subject to consumer customization and products with fixed consumer properties. The customized products are manufactured in the interests of a civilian customer represented on the market by business partners and the consumer community. Non-customized products are manufactured in the interests of the state customer according to a pre-agreed project with fixed product properties. The company's management is implemented through the internal regulation of business processes and business projects that form cash and commodity flows. The scheme of a system of end-to-end economic management of a company that simultaneously produces products that are subject to and not subject to consumer customization is proposed. The scientific novelty of the obtained results lies in the implementation of an innovative method of complementary economic management of the company, based on the combination of managerial actions of the company's top management and the effects of artificial intelligence. The quality of management is assessed according to the system of indicators laid down in the company's financial plan. The regulation is carried out in a continuous cycle to minimize deviations of the observed and planned indicators. Along with the commercial performance of the business, the design characteristics set by the consumer when customizing products are also monitored.

Integrating Sales, Design and Production: A Configuration System for Automation in Mass Customization

Companies manufacturing customized engineer-to-order (ETO) products are decelerated by repetitive work, misinterpretations and uncoordinated processes which prohibits the achievement of mass customization. Being able to deliver customized product with low costs and fast delivery times, the concept of mass customization, is a prerequisite for maintained competitiveness with the demands from the market today. This paper presents a product configuration system (PCS) for customized products using design automation enabled by knowledge-based engineering (KBE) and enterprise-wide optimization (EWO). With this approach, the process from sales to delivery of customized products can be extensively rationalized. The PCS consists of two modules. The first being a configurator for use in the sales quotation stage. Here, customer requirements are captured, and used to generate alternatives feasible for the customer context. Thereby, correct quotations can be generated at the sales instance. The second module is the enterprise-wide configurator where accepted orders are concurrently optimized for their detailed and final design, considering the current state of the production and concurrent sales cases in the company. In other terms, instead of adapting the supply chain according to the design of the products in the order entry, the design of the products in the order entry are adapted according to the state of the supply chain. Thereby, resources can be efficiently utilized to the benefit of both the customer and the company, with reduced costs and delivery times. An implementation of the PCS in a case concerning spiral staircases, an ETO product, has shown potential of substantially reducing resources and errors and enable a reliable process supporting achievement of mass customization.

CONFIGURING CUSTOMIZED PRODUCTS WITH DESIGN OPTIMIZATION AND VALUE-DRIVEN DESIGN

In order to efficiently design and deliver customized products, it is crucial that the process of translating customer needs to engineering characteristics and into unique products is smooth and without any misinterpretations. The paper proposes a method that combines design optimization with value-driven design to support and automate configuration of customized products. The proposed framework is applied to a case example with spiral staircases, a product that is uniquely configured for each customer from a set of both standard and customized components; a process that is complex, iterative and error-prone. In the case example, the optimization and value-driven design models are used to automate and speed-up the process of delivering quotations and design proposals that could be judged based on both engineering characteristics as well as their added value, thereby increasing the knowledge at the sales stage. Finally, a multi-objective optimization algorithm is employed to generate a set of Pareto-optimal solutions that contain four clusters of solutions that dominate the baseline design. Hence the decision-maker is given a set of optimal solutions to choose from when balancing different economical and technical characteristics.