Configuration design based on generic bill of materials

To support the innovation in configuration design,Generic Bill of Materials (GBOM) was adopted to represent the general product structure of product family and class unit was introduced to express variant module.The configuration class unit was applied to generate the combination variety and scaling class unit was used to represent units for further design.Then the mechanism of both types of variants was analyzed.GBOM-based Product Configuration Model(GPCM)was established based on variant configuration technology,which generated specific product structure by top-down configuration.Assembly cloning technology was used to translate the GBOM to Engineering BOM(EBOM).Finally,the configuration design process and implementation results were provided.The proposed configuration design method could speed up the design-for-order process and was validated in the actual product design.