Rapid one-of-a-kind production

To shorten the product development cycle time and reduce the cost at the same time, which is very critical for the survival of those small and mid-sized one-of-a-kind production (SMOKP) companies, various computer communication, simulation and computer aided engineering and management techniques have been widely used in these SMOKP companies. However, according to our study, the applications of these advanced computer technologies in these SMOKP companies are lack of system integration and synergy, which result in communication errors, reworks, duplications and hence a longer product development lead time and a higher cost. To solve this problem, an inter/intranet based computer aided rapid product development system is presented in this paper. This system consists of a number of inter/intranet based computer models or sub-systems for supporting rapid development of a one-of-a-kind product. It also employs a novel concurrent product development strategy called “prototype based incremental product development strategy” and an integrated product data structure called “product production structure”. Some industrial implementations of the proposed system, product development strategy and product data structure are also reported in the paper.