A web-based platform for mass customisation and personalisation

The currently widespread mass customisation paradigm greatly affects the planning and operation of manufacturing networks. The increasing need towards customised products in combination with the volatile product demand calls for efficient ways to design and plan manufacturing network configurations. The work discussed in this paper aims at enabling a mass customisation and personalisation implementation, by engaging the customer in the design of unique products and by enabling the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to efficiently plan manufacturing and transportation activities of highly customised products by exploiting an innovative decentralised manufacturing approach. The suggested method, which is implemented into a web-based platform consists of (a) the "User Adaptive Design System'' (UADS), focused on providing user-friendly design tools that allow unique product design changes, in a constrained way, (b) the "Decentralised Manufacturing Platform'' (DEMAP) that allows the generation, evaluation and selection of manufacturing/ transportation network alternatives, and (c) the "Environmental Assessment Module'' (EAM) that assesses through simulation the environmental footprint of the alternative network configurations. The applicability of the suggested architecture is validated through its pilot installation to a European automotive manufacturer and a CNC machine building company. (C) 2014 CIRP.