A suggestion to the general configuration of individual products by the application of dynamic document structures.

Abstract: More than ever individual products that fulfill the exact customer wishes are in great demand. This statement also applies to the automobile market, especially to vehicles of the upper class. Because the manufactures offer a large selection of individual packages nearly every customer wish can be realized.

From the company point of view the biggest problem of this development is the management of the variety of variants which partly goes ad infinitum. In the following an approach for the reduction or rather the complete avoidance of this complexity is to be shown by the use of a special product configuration system which is decoupled from the actual product model.

Key Words: product configuration, mass customization, individualization, product modeling

1. INTRODUCTION

Individualized products basically differ in two characteristics from standard products. On the one hand the customer can decide about a multiplicity of features of the wished product. On the other side very often a lot o specifications for every feature are available. This leads to an almost unlimited diversity of variations. While the variety in most classical areas of application of product configurators is generated by the combination of just a few products (Bruckner 2003), the variety in the area of individualization is already existent by one single item.

The aim of this article is to present a process which allows the use of pseudo article numbers to avoid the complexity. The basis for this are dynamic generated templates which describe the individual scales in detailed and structured form. The example in the article is taken from the area of individualization of vehicles.

2. INITIAL SITUATION AND PRESENTATION OF THE PROBLEM

The initial point for further comments in this article is the existence of a configuration of a standard product. Within this configuration a nomination of the wished individual packages takes place but without any detailed description of the scales.

In the following the problem is shown at the example of an individual cover of a headrest.

2.1. Case study

In the simplest case the cover of a headrest can be described by three main characteristics (see Fig. 1). These are the material and the color of the cover as well as the used yarn. Proceeding on the assumption, that the customer can choose between ten materials, fifteen colors and thirty different yarns, it will make at least 4.500 possible combination.

Furthermore, considering the possibility that the customer can decide separately on the mentioned characteristics also for the central lane and the collateral line of the headrest, the number of variations increase to more than twenty million. The existence of different types of headrests is not included in this number.


2. 2. Presentation of the problem

Because of the multitude of possibilities which already occur by one individual piece with just a few number of obligatory descriptions of characteristics the use of definite item numbers makes no sense. In fact the use of pseudo article numbers seems to be more adequate.

The decisive disadvantage of this strategy is the loss of the significance of the item numbers. Therefore an additional description is necessary which helps to specify an individual piece clearly.