Algorithm for Customizing the Material Selection Process for Application in Power Engineering

Abstract

Disruptions in the global market are influencing value and supply chains reminding businesses and industries that variability and diversity of supply chains may be essential for surviving and sustainability. Operations management of any business has to address these challenges in order to avoid any serious interruptions in supply of materials in production industries by seeking substitute inputs. At the same time, the technological development offers new materials with similar quality properties, making thereby the substitute material search more difficult in terms of selecting appropriate materials with a level of quality which is similar enough. Another aspect in shifting can be found in more social-related reasons addressing changes in the value chains like traceability, low carbonization, and a more customer-oriented approach, because of moving towards green digital business. In this sense the intention of this work was to propose an algorithm for customizing the process of identifying appropriate materials in production by relying on existing algorithms i.e., the Ashby mapping, big data, applying algorithms of data analysis based on exclusion criteria embracing transformation paradigms, for enabling customization of the material selection process. The proposed algorithm was applied on two case examples, demonstrating that diversity of materials plays an important role in addressing customization requests from customers. Consequently, understanding and implementing a customer-centric approach in various phases of the product life cycle contributes to a better response by businesses faced with issuing customized offerings.