Design automation in industrial order-to-delivery processes : Enabling mass customization of made-to-order products

Sammanfattning: Today's manufacturing industry is heading more and more towards a mass customization approach. This enables customers to individually specify product characteristics and unique design features to fulfill their exact needs. A common way to accomplish this is by means of design automation often used together with knowledge-based engineering. In this thesis, the order-to-delivery process for customized floor gratings at Weland AB is used as a case. This process is currently manual and dependent on several different departments. It results in a time consuming process which is prone to human errors. The purpose is to investigate how design automation can be used and implemented to automate and improve sections of the order-to-delivery process for customized products at an industrial manufacturing company. The objective is to develop a product configurator to automatically generate 3D models and documentation for production and sales support. The configurator succeeded in demonstrating the possible advantages of using design automation. It showed the possibility to reduce the construction department's workload and achieve faster time-to-offer for the sales department. Additionally it is concluded that using a product configurator reduces the risk of human errors and opens up possibilities for other improvements, such as reducing material waste in the production.