Configuration design of product families based on features

Design for Configuration is an important means to meet challenges companies are being faced with: increased diversity, smaller lot-sizes, shorter product life cycles as well as shorter time-to-markets and delivery times. Companies that approach configuring are concentrating on providing variation to the market. However the configurable product development might increase the complexity of the design process. One way to reduce the complexity of the configurable product family designing is to develop approaches for its formalization. The formalization can be based on features and the knowledge which they capsulate. This research subject tries to develop an approach for the configurable product development based on the concept of configuration feature . Two cases are considered. The first case concerns the development of methods for transformation of one-a-kind product into a configurable product. The second case concerns the strategies for the development of methods for new products.