Keywords: mass customization, complex products, parametric computer-aided design.

Manufacturing and engineering companies competing in global markets today face the challenges of bringing their products to market faster, improving product quality, and reducing costs. To this end, the project KOMSOLV ("Fast Offer and Optimized Design for Complex Products") aims to reduce the amount of time necessary in the technical verification phase of product ordering through the optimization of construction parameters, thus reducing the time to market for the product and the lowering its offer price.

Besides their standard product offerings, KSB a leading producer of multistage high-pressure pumps for use in power plants. These engineered pumps are not standard offered pumps, but are customized for individual customers. The Institute for Engineering Design at the TU Braunschweig has established a process by which computer-aided design models used in the development process can be quickly reconfigured to show a change in design parameters resulting from an optimization tool that integrates design calculations made in Mathcad and Excel. The optimization tool, developed by DUALIS GmbH IT Solution, is capable of seven different mathematical optimization strategies. In an effort to reduce the cost of each product, part construction parameters can be optimized very early in the design process, reflecting a true price at the time of product offer and technical verification of the proposed parameters. The optimization of a few key dimensions can considerably lower the cost of raw materials needed to make the finished parts. This optimization allows firms to more quickly determine the final price of the product, as well as determine early on any potential problems with offering the customized product.

This paper shows an industry example whereby optimizing key construction parameters early in the design process and incorporating these construction parameters into a generic computer-aided design model makes it possible to provide a quote for an improved-quality, customized pump to a customer in a shorter amount of time while still meeting all required criteria given by the customer.

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