A three-phase integrated model for product configuration change problems

Requirements of engineers or customers may result in product configuration change with product life cycle; effective management of product configuration can actually enhance productivity and customer satisfaction. This study aims to develop a three-phase evaluation model incorporating fuzzy theory, value engineering and multi-criterion to find optimal strategies for product configuration change, so as to select suitable combination of parts suppliers. Genetic algorithm was used to solve the issue concerned with part change in a short time with part quality, cost, time and reliability as evaluation parameters. Finally, as a case study, the display module of a notebook was analyzed, the results indicate that the evaluation can be effectively applied in a large-scale product configuration change.