Study on Product Family Architecture Dynamic Evolution Based on Product Instances

Abstract

Product family architecture (PFA) need to keep the dynamic evolution, in order to meet the changing needs of customers and effectively support the mass customization. This paper puts forward the theory of PFA dynamic evolution based on structure semantic unit. The variation of PFA is mainly caused by the changes in component. In the process of evolution, some components of the architecture need to be removed, replaced or added. For this purpose, the concepts of structure semantic and structure semantic unit were proposed. The structure semantic unit is the combination of assembly relationship, assembly constraint, and geometric information of related dimension and the model of components. The corresponding operations (remove, replace or add) of component is ascertained by consumption analysis of part and similarity calculation between structure semantic units.