Configurable product design using multiple fuzzy models

The present economic environment is characterized by increasing market demands for customized products. Configurable product design or design for configuration represents the solution for the new market challenges. Configurable product design is complex. The development of a methodology of design for configuration must take into account the different views of the product that occur during the design process, the great number of product variants that can be generated and also the customer-oriented characteristic of the configurable products. Moreover, the design for configuration must represent and manipulate the uncertainty throughout all design stages. This paper proposes the development of an integrated approach of configurable product design based on multiple fuzzy models. The transition from customer specifications into physical solutions is performed by the help of multiple fuzzy models: the fuzzy product specification model, the fuzzy functional network, the fuzzy physical solution model and the fuzzy constraint model. The degrees of interactions between product functions defined in the fuzzy functional network can vary according to the functional structure chosen by a customer. This may lead to different functional structures of the product and, consequently, to different alternatives of physical solutions. After the set of satisfying physical solutions is determined, the fuzzy constraint model is applied to determine the valid set of solutions. An application that illustrates the proposed approach is developed at the end of the paper.