Design for mass customisation, design for manufacturing, and design for supply chain: A review of the literature

Abstract

This survey provides a review of the fundamental approaches to design for mass customisation (DFMC), design for manufacturing (DFM) and design for supply chains (DFSC). The key term here is design while mass customisation, manufacturing and supply chain are the contexts from which the respective design objectives are derived. While these three areas of design are closely related, they have different focusses, which is reflected in the broader range of approaches proposed in the literature. The authors look at the literature through the lens of the product, process, and supply chain optimisation, with a variety of objectives ranging from improving product quality and variety while reducing costs, minimising environmental impacts and optimising supplier manufacture cooperation. In addition to the reviews of the approaches to DFMC, DFM and DFSC, recommendations on their practical system implementations are provided. While the authors acknowledge that the richness of the literature of each of the three design areas warrants a dedicated literature review, the main purpose of this survey is to pursue an integrated view on the three design issues faced by modern manufacturers and provide them and other related practitioners with a summary of representative approaches in the literature. Although it was not intended to conduct an exhaustive literature review of the literature, researchers from academia may still find the work useful by looking at the interactions of the three design areas from the perspective of joint-decision making, which is the angle from which the literature is approached.