Customer-specific starting solutions and product architecture adaption in the B2B configuration process

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Günther Schuh; Professor Dr. Daniel Wentzel
• Subject Area: Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development ; Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 389505435

The customer requirements for the individualization leads to an increase of product variants and increased complexity effects within the company. Companies in project business, especially the engineer-to-order (ETO) processing, are characterized by a high level of individualization. However, in these companies the desired reduction of product variants is difficult to achieve because existing product variants cannot be eliminated in a simple way. The elimination of product variants needs to be conducted within the theoretical solution space. This creates two challenges for companies. On the one hand, the variant-induced complexity costs have to be minimized. On the other hand, the diversity of variants can lead to customer decision complexity within the decision making process. Based on a completed DFG-funded research project, it must be answered how customer-specific requirements can be translated into product architectures both efficiently and with reduced complexity.The ascertainability and usability with regard to the diversity of customer requirements is often realized by means of product configurators, which increases the decision complexity significantly perceived by the customer. One solution to this problem is the implementation of predefined configuration solutions, so-called starting solutions. Therefore, the aim of this research project is the consideration of a systematic and customer-integrated adaption of the product architecture using customer-specific starting solutions in the B2B configuration process. This research is focused on ETO companies. The Chair of Marketing of RWTH Aachen University mainly investigates the formation and control of customer preferences, the Laboratory of Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University elaborates the systematic product architecture adaptation for defined customer groups.The research project can be structured in four partial models. In the first step, the derivation of requirements for the integration of customer-oriented starting solutions will be derived. In the following, a description, assignment, and evaluation model for the definition, allocation and selection of customer-specific starting solutions will be developed. The process of adapting the product architecture will be considered accompanying. In the last step, a demonstration tool for the practical use of the research findings will be developed and the transfer of the research findings will be facilitated. The planned research proposition will result in an improvement of efficiency and effectiveness of the B2B configuration process by defining starting solutions. In addition, customer-specific preference mapping and internal complexity effects will be considered. This proposition also enables product architecture adaptations and achieves a higher consistency between the product and the customer preferences as early as possible in the configuration process, while avoiding internal complexity effects.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants