Incorporating tolerances of customers' requirements for customized products

Tolerancing conventionally deals with the variation of manufacturing processes to meet the requirements of product quality. With the development in product customization, it has been generally accepted that customers' requirements also have acceptable tolerance range. This flexibility provides an opportunity to better match customer requirements with richer product offerings through customization. A probabilistic model is presented in this paper to incorporate the tolerance of functional requirements into customized product design. By leveraging on the requirements tolerance, customers are more likely to get their desired products. Customer requirements tolerance can thus open up a new dimension for product customization. (C) 2014 CIRP.