Design support for product architecture considering supply chain (Evaluation model based on delivery capacity every transportation means)

Abstract

This study proposes a method to support product architecture design considering the supply chain. Previous studies on product architecture design include methods to realize modularization and product family design based on the relationships among components. From the supply chain perspective, mathematical models and simulation models have been proposed to improve the supply chain of modularized products. However, there has been little research on design support that simultaneously considers product architecture and supply chain. In particular, there is little consideration given to the impact on the supply chain caused by the connection between components. To address this issue, this study proposes a design methodology for the simultaneous design of both product architecture and supply chain from the perspectives of economy, environment, quality, and transportation. This paper newly proposes an evaluation model that incorporates the production capacity of each supplier, the delivery capacity of each transportation mode, and the on-time delivery rate with consideration of above component connections. The proposed method supports the selection of an architecture and its supply chain by visualizing the characteristics, such as the trade-off between evaluation indicators depending on the degree of modularization. As a result of applying the proposed method to the architectural design of a laptop computer, we confirmed that the proposed method can suggest to the designer an appropriate architecture and its supply chain according to the number of products to be manufactured and their means of transportation.

Keywords

• modular design
• product architecture
• supply chain management
• design support
• delivery capacity
• production capacity