A simulated annealing method based on a clustering approach to determine bills of materials for a large product family

Bruno Agard and Bernard Penz

International Journal of Production Economics, 2009, vol. 117, issue 2, 389-401

Abstract: Defining an efficient bill of materials for a family of complex products is a real challenge for companies, largely because of the diversity they offer to consumers. To remain competitive, their products are available with many variants and options, which leads to a difficult question: "How can a bill of materials be defined so that all possible products can be built efficiently?" One way to answer it is to define a set of components (called modules), each of which contains a set of primary functions. An individual product is then built by combining selected modules. This industrial problem leads, in turn, to the complex optimization problem we study in this paper, which we propose to solve using a simulated annealing method based on a clustering approach.

Keywords: Product; design; Bill; of; materials; Optimization; Clustering; Simulated; annealing; Mass; customization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925-5273(08)00380-0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:117:y:2009:i:2:p:389-401

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().