Title: A component selection model for product design

Authors: F. Fred Choobineh, Esmail Mohebbi, Chun Fan

Addresses: Department of Industrial & Management Systems Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA. ' Department of Management/MIS, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514, USA. ' Capella University, Minneapolis, MN 55402, USA

Abstract: Product design teams often aim to streamline product structures by standardising products| components and their features in order to reduce operations cost and improve productivity. We examine the notion of standardisation of components in product design by formulating a component selection model for the purpose of profit maximisation. The mathematical model proposed in this paper falls under the category of non-linear integer programming, and takes into account revenue, production and inventory costs. Our parametric analysis of a case example concludes that full commonality of components among products does not always maximise profit; furthermore, the optimal solution space is bounded by the minimal-component/minimal-feature and maximal-component/maximal-features cases. The conditions under which these design solutions perform well are identified.

Keywords: product design; component selection; component commonality; minimal features; maximal features; integer programming; applied management science; component standardisation; mathematical modelling; revenue costs; production costs; inventory costs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMS.2011.037707

International Journal of Applied Management Science, 2011 Vol.3 No.1, pp.30 - 51

Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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