Bio-inspired phylogenetics for designing product platforms and delayed differentiation utilizing hybrid additive/subtractive manufacturing

Biologicalisation in Manufacturing is used to integrate biological and bio-inspired processes, principles and resources into manufacturing to handle challenges such as product proliferation. This paper introduces a product variety management methodology utilizing bio-inspired phylogenetics for designing product platforms for the delayed product differentiation using hybrid additive/subtractive manufacturing technologies. The median joining phylogenetic network, an ancestral sequence recognition method used in biology, is applied. This method is used to design product platforms that resemble the common ancestors in nature and determine the process plans for the platform customization that resembles the adaption in nature. A new feature extraction procedure is introduced to extract the additive and subtractive features of a product family. Two case studies, guiding bushings and flanges product families, are used for demonstration. The developed methodology improves the responsiveness and product mix flexibility and decreases the storage costs. (C) 2021 CIRP.

Automated summary

This paper introduces a method of product variety management utilizing bio-inspired phylogenetics for designing product platforms, which improves manufacturing flexibility and reduces storage costs.