An approach to generating the sequence of part variant design based on information transfer utility

Abstract

Purpose Product variant design can only be achieved after all its constituent parts have been implemented by variant design. It is necessary to plan the sequence of part variant design reasonably. The product variant design process involves a large amount of information transfer events at the dimensional level. A reasonable product variant design process needs to make full use of the information transfer characters of parts to decrease the uncertainty of product variant design process. The existing methods of researching the product variant design process mainly focus on resource constraint and activity logic. They are deficient, however, in information transfer resolution and uncertainty management. This paper aims to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach This paper identifies the number of dimension transfer paths and the position of dimension locating within a transfer path as being the key factors affecting the information transfer role of dimension. Information transfer utility is proposed to measure the information transfer capability of dimensions and parts. Based on these, a two-stage approach of generating the sequence of part variant design based on information transfer utility is proposed. Findings The uncertainty of dimension constraint network is minimal during the product variant design process when parts are implemented by variant design under the sequence generated through a two-stage method based on the information transfer utilities of parts, as does the times of parameter transferring and iteration in dimension constraint network. Originality/value Part variant design under the sequence of descending information transferring utilities can decrease the difficulty of implementing product variant design validly and also increase the efficiency. This suggests an innovative method to planning the product variant design process reasonably from the perspective of informatics.