Task Structuring Toward Computational Approaches to Product Variety Design

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses the direction toward computational approaches for product variety design. Product variety design here refers to an engineering challenge for designing multiple models simultaneously. This paper defines the formal representation of product variety design, and proposes a structure of design tasks involved in product variety. The analysis reveals several characteristics of product variety design, and identifies unique and essential tasks for simultaneously designing multiple models: correlation analysis, competing against system constraints, control variable selection, coverage distribution and combination selection. The paper closes with the scenario toward computational methods and difficulties to overcome for product variety optimization.