Web-Based Decision Support System for Orders Planning
Competition in the global economy is intensifying the implementation of the mass customization paradigm. This requires a substantial increase in the personalized interaction between client and producer. Agility in the order-production-delivery cycle optim
- PDF / 162,179 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 73 Downloads / 212 Views
Web-Based Decision Support System for Orders Planning Anto´nio Arrais-Castro, Maria Leonilde R. Varela, and Sı´lvio Carmo-Silva
Abstract Competition in the global economy is intensifying the implementation of the mass customization paradigm. This requires a substantial increase in the personalized interaction between client and producer. Agility in the orderproduction-delivery cycle optimization is a key element for industrial enterprises as a means to meet requirements of this paradigm. The use of agile methodologies for this purpose requires improving processes of product specification and product data management. Under today’s technology this tends to be predominantly carried out with the aid of the Internet using mostly web services. For a company, this also requires better integration of front-office processes (interaction with the outside) and back office (including production processes). Mass Customization scenarios are characterized by large product variety dependent on product specific requirements of individual customers. In this process there is a need to provide the customer with tools for easy product specification, selection or configuration. Web-based configurators can provide an opportunity to both producer and customer, through an interactive process, for a more formal, faster, effective and better product and orders specification. In this paper, we propose an architecture and describe functionalities of a web-based system for interactive products and customer orders configuration. The proposed system can also be a valuable tool to support production and delivery. Keywords Mass configuration • Web services • Product configurator
A. Arrais-Castro • M.L.R. Varela (*) • S. Carmo-Silva Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Azure´m Campus, 4800-058 Guimara˜es, Portugal e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] A. Madureira et al. (eds.), Computational Intelligence and Decision Making: Trends and 167 Applications, Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering 61, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4722-7_16, # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
168
16.1
A. Arrais-Castro et al.
Introduction
Globalization introduces new challenges for companies that have to face a potentially large number of business competitors and new requirements that have to be fulfilled in order to maintain market share and improve customer retention. The implementation of competitive strategies and process optimization procedures is a requirement for survival. The integration of front-office and back-office processes needs to be efficient, cost-effective and error-free. Besides, companies need to adopt a strategy of differentiation. Having the lowest prices is no longer enough: companies need to adapt their products to the specific needs of customers. Modern consumers are particularly exigent, demanding higher levels of quality, functionality and correspondence to their specific needs. Traditionally, the inclusion of optional
Data Loading...
