Mathematical model for simultaneous design of module commonalization and supply chain configuration toward global product family

Manufacturing today has become global in all aspects marketing, design, production, distribution, etc. While product family design has been an essential viewpoint for meeting the demand for product variety, its interaction with the issues of supply chain, market systems, etc. makes the meaning of product family both broad and more complicated. In this paper we call such situation ‘global product family,’ and first characterizes its components and complexity. Following this, we proposes a mathematical model for the simultaneous design problem of module commonalization strategies under the given product architecture and supply chain configuration through selection of manufacturing sites for module production, assembly and final distribution as an instance of the problems. In the model, the choice of modules and various sites are represented with 0-1 design variables with the volume of production and transportation represented with non-negative continuous design variables, and the objective defined on total cost. An optimization method is configured with a genetic algorithm and a simplex method for such a mixed integer programming problem. Some numerical case studies are included to determine the validity and promise of the developed mathematical model and algorithm. Finally, we conclude with some discussion of future work.

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