Towards market driven manufacturing systems design

Abstract: Few companies can compete on price/cost alone. With increasing customer expectations alternative ways of adding value is desirable. One way to diverge from competitors is to select a market or market segment in which to compete. Criteria for focusing on a specific market segment are the attractiveness of certain markets, and companies' ability to meet the demand of different market segments. Strategy can be seen as problem solving within a competitive environment. The use of strategy is a way of seeking to increase market share. Designing a manufacturing system supporting a certain strategy contributes to a  company's competitiveness. The objective of this dissertation is to develop an approach for linking manufacturing system design to customer demand, through manufacturing strategy.Axiomatic design is in this thesis chosen as a tool to structure the linkages between strategy and manufacturing system design. The starting point is to analyze an existing framework that is based on the principles of axiomatic design. This framework, the Production System Design and Deployment framework, is analyzed from both a design perspective and a manufacturing strategy perspective. As a second step, a design perspective is applied to manufacturing strategy. The possibility to apply a design perspective to strategy creation/planning is analyzed. Further, axiomatic design is used to link manufacturing strategy to the manufacturing system design.An axiomatic design approach to the design of manufacturing strategy is presented. The approach consists of three domains. The first domain represents the market demands. The second domain represents the manufacturing strategies designed to meet the market demands in the first domain. In the third domain variables of the manufacturing system design is represented.When designing a manufacturing strategy based on axiomatic design, the manufacturing strategy becomes linked to customer demands. Further, the presented approach link manufacturing system design to the designed manufacturing strategies, thereby supporting linkages between system design and market demands.The use of axiomatic design in the approach has several advantages. It highlights the relationships and linkages between different goals, strategies and process variables. Another advantage is the way in which the design principles guide the designer in achieving an acceptable solution.