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The importance of incorporating customer preferences into product specifications for successful customized product design has been well recognized. An approach based on the identification of customer need patterns is proposed in this paper for better understanding of customer preferences and accordingly to enhance the product definition for customization and personalization. A tree‐structured classification algorithm is formulated for the identification of customer need patterns. Accordingly, a two‐phase methodology is developed for effective product definition. A case study of power supply products is reported to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed approach.

This paper presents a database system developed to provide a computerized environment for requirement management during the product definition phase. The scope of this database system is to facilitate and demonstrate a methodology for product definition by recognizing and adopting functional requirement patterns from previous product designs so as to address a broad spectrum of domain‐specific customer requirements and organize requirement information for product specifications. The database system improves the product definition process during design and redesign efforts by integrating customer and design information all together and by reusing this information. A prototype requirement management database system is implemented on a PC platform using Microsoft Access.

Traditional production management systems are often designed to support manufacturing based on a limited number of product variants. With the emerging trend of producing customized products to meet diverse customer needs, the number of product variants increases exponentially in mass customization. In a situation of assembly‐to‐order production, production planning and control involve not only product variety, but also process variety. It is imperative to synchronize product and process variety in a coherent manner.

This paper discusses integrated product and production data management for assembly‐to‐order production. An integrated BOM and routing generator is proposed for the purpose of unifying BOM and assembly‐planning data in order to accommodate a wide range of product variability and production variations.

An integrated BOM and routing generator excels in variety synchronization for assembly‐to‐order production planning.

Variety synchronization opens many opportunities for research into mass customization production. It is important to deal with not only the results of high variety production but also the causes of process variations.

The proposed methodology is applicable to manage high variety production like mass customization.

The paper proposes the variety synchronization issue in mass customization. An object‐oriented methodology is applied to manage variety of BOMs and variety of routings.

Customized product development is facing the challenges of maintaining mass producibility and exploring customer perception on target products. This paper reports an approach by combining virtual prototyping (VP) with design by manufacturing simulation techniques. By constructing virtual prototypes, accurate assessments of mass producibility and customer acceptance will enable better informed design of customized products. The primary goal of VP for customized product development is to provide a multidisciplinary design definition and rapid prototyping environment for concept development and a tailored, scenario‐based simulation environment for concept evaluation within a single facility. This design environment facilitates the capture and utilization of information generated during the design phase, and the simultaneous generation, at design time, of manufacturing, materials, costing, and scheduling data, together with visual evaluation of customer perception on target products, hence supporting the implementation of concurrent engineering.

Mass customization aims at satisfying individual customer needs while keeping mass production efficiency. This paper discusses the employment of concurrent engineering for realizing mass customization. Concurrent design for mass customization (CDFMC) is put forward by extending the traditional boundaries of product design to encompass a larger scope spanning from sales and marketing to distribution and services. In addition, CDFMC advocates designing product families instead of individual products. The paper develops a concept of product family architecture (PFA) to support CDFMC via assisting different functional departments within a manufacturing enterprise to work together cohesively. The rationality of CDFMC lies in synchronizing market positioning, soliciting customer requirements, increasing commonality in product designs, and enhancing manufacturing scale of economy.

Recognizing the rationale of a product family architecture (PFA) with respect to design for mass customization (DFMC), this paper discusses the fundamental issues underlying a PFA, including product information modeling, structural implications of product families, functional variety versus technical variety, class‐member relationships inherent in variety, modularity and commonality, PFA design spaces, and PFA composition. The background research is reviewed in terms of product architecture and modularity, product platform and product families, and product modeling and design process models. To organize product varieties in DFMC, a PFA should be described from three different perspectives, namely the functional (as seen from customer, sales and marketing viewpoints), behavioral (as seen from the product technology or design engineer perspective) and structural (as seen from the fulfillment or manufacturing and logistic perspective). Meeting diverse customer requirements and achieving volume economy simultaneously can be best achieved by synchronizing these three perspectives. In fact, the mappings between PFA views manifest the cooperative effort among different business functions, whilst three PFA views facilitate the integration of different phases of product development.

In an e‐manufacturing environment, the acquisition of real time quality data and information is paramount for distributed collaborative manufacturers to make quick and correct actions towards quality problems in a manufacturing process. This paper attempts to assist manufacturers in obtaining such data and information and further to make decisions regarding quality control.

In this paper, an online quality information system (OQIS) for quality control in an e‐manufacturing environment is presented. The common object request broker architecture standards and client‐server technologies are applied to obtain real time data and information whenever required at different locations. In addition, several modules, responsible for product design, process planning, quality control and data input, are developed within a coherent OQIS information model.

Preliminary results show advantages of the OQIS for companies to obtain real time quality data and information. It can also suggest possible improvements pertaining to quality control towards e‐manufacturing.

The proposed OQIS can be further developed to solve such issues as explanation of complex quality information and deployment costs in the enterprise. Further research should be directed to the evolution of OQIS.

The OQIS can provide consistent quality data and information, based on which manufacturers can make timely and correct decisions in solving quality problems in an e‐manufacturing environment.

Proposes a pragmatic approach to product costing. The approach involves two stages, namely the preparatory stage and the production stage. In the preparatory stage, standard routings are first extracted from existing products. A generic activity hierarchy is established according to the analysis of standard routings, where cost drivers for each activity are identified and summarized by appropriate Cost‐related Design Features (CDFs). Then the Maynard Operation Sequence Technique (MOST) is employed to analyze each operation of standard routings to determine the associated standard time. Historical cost data are analyzed to induce the relationships between the CDFs and standard time, namely Time‐Estimating Relationships (TERs). By allocating plant‐wide overhead costs to standard routings, the unit price of standard time is established to indicate Cost‐Estimating Relationships (CERs). A library of material costs is also summarized from existing products. In the production stage, CDFs are first induced from the schematic of a new design. Then a “dummy process plan” for this design can be inferred and used to retrieve the associated TERs to determine its time estimate. Once a standard time has been estimated, CERs can be applied to compile the total product cost by adding the estimated material costs. A case study conducted in an electronics enterprise is also reported.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study for professionals who are in research and practice in maintenance engineering. Design/methodology/approach – This is a case study. Therefore, on‐site involvement in the development of steps for maintenance projects has been included. Findings – The case study shows that, if project management practice and involvement of external experts and parties are allowed in the maintenance projects, then issues in maintenance projects can be addressed more clearly and the cost and schedule for such a maintenance project can also be optimized. The use of information technology in the whole process can be facilitated not only during the planning phase, but also during the execution and review process. Research limitations/implications – Implication of this study can be seen in TAM projects where time and energy have to be spent to get the best practice. The case study will show a real life example of TAM. Practical implications – The paper should help one to understand the implications of starting a turn‐around maintenance project and the issues built therein. The case study highlights that collaborative planning and execution of TAM are useful. Collaboration could be in terms of internal parties, such as decision makers and managers, or of external parties, such as external experts and contractors. Originality/value – There are only a few studies in the turn‐around management process. As oil refining is an important economic process, learning of cases in one of the major oil‐refining plants can help others to emulate the process so that overall efficiency of turn‐around maintenance can be increased across the industry.

Online, on‐demand and real‐time availability of information to all members of a manufacturing system enables them to be agile and in the best position to react quickly, efficiently, synchronously, and collectively to the changing market. This paper proposes an integrated web‐based logistics management system for agile supply demand network design (ASDN).

The paper presents a software system, which is distributed as open source. A case study of ABB Company in Finland has been undertaken and this demonstrates the validity of ASDN in designing and managing supply demand networks.

Current software applications, such as ERP, WMS and EAI do not support a higher‐level decision making. There are several performance measures, which are directly connected to structure of the network.

The presented software supports modeling, analyzing and limited optimizing of supply demand networks. Also discussed is the network level logistics analysis that is behind the modeling tool.

The paper introduces the ASDN software, which is freely available for research and commercial uses. The case example shows how this type of network architecture‐related decisions can be analyzed.