IPROD

Enterprises struggle to survive in today’s socio-economic environment characterized by globalization, shorter product lifecycle, demand for increased product variety and customized products, exponential technological development, and high uncertainty... Flexible, agile and reconfigurable manufacturing systems based on a modular product and process; allow enterprises to survive in this environment. Modular design permits providing high product variety and flexibility with reduced costs. Product modular design is an old concept, but modular process is relatively new. There exist many research works on both methods, yet seldom are those considering integrated product/process modular design. This project aims at proposing an integrated product/process modular design method and to develop an integrated product/process configurator which allows different users to add/remove/modify product or process modules and to develop different product variants, customizable and new products. Achieving the project’s goals consists of at first proposing a module conceptual model based on an integrated product/process approach. This requires analyzing existing modularity typologies and classifications in order to combine and enrich the most adequate ones for an integrated product/process approach. The main used modular typology is functionality, which considers only the system’s functions to define modules. But, considering only functionality is not sufficient. Manufacturing characteristics among other criteria should be included. Secondly, and after developing the integrated module conceptual model, an integrated modular product/process design method shall be developed. This method will include the definition of modules (what a module consists of), of an integrated product/process platform (a platform is the set of components that establish a common structure), and of an integrated product/process architecture (the way to define which modules will form the whole required product and process). Thirdly, an integrated product modules identification and process resequencing method will be developed. Even though seeking technical solutions is the major concern in product design, it is at the production stage that product costs are actually committed and product quality and lead times are highlighted the most. Therefore, integrating the modular process design method in the product modular design method leads to reducing configuration time (and thus costs), production costs and increasing quality (especially in the case of high product variety). As an example, process resequencing is realized based on a predefined set of modules to form the product. The main objective is to reduce reconfiguration time while being able to produce the already chosen product modules. Whereas it would be interesting if the product modules choice takes into consideration the process resequencing constraints (time and costs). A choice between several assemblies of modules forming the product could be made based on reducing process resequencing costs and time. Finally, a technical platform supporting the developed integrated modular design method will be developed. It is called an integrated product/process configurator. This configurator should be based on a well-structured information model supporting an integrated approach. Many information models exist. The aim of the project is not to develop a new one, but to choose and enrich an already existing model. The configurator has to be extendable, scalable and flexible to support new product/process modules, architectures and platforms. All the developed concepts, methods and tools will be validated and evaluated using a use case: car headlights. Car headlights are formed of several mechanical and mechatronics sub-systems. They are sufficiently complex to test the developed integrated modular design method.