Developing a Product Architecture for a Window Manufacturing Company by using UML Class Diagrams and Design Structure Matrix: Challenges and Lessons Learnt

In recent years, the industry's focus has shifted from mass production to mass customization to meet customer needs and market fluctuations. Product customization increases the cost associated with processes, materials, and technologies, thus increasing the complexity of the production system. A proper product architecture (PA) that identifies all the possible product variants is necessary to impact manufacturing processes positively in terms of assembly complexity, time, and manufacturing equipment. However, many researchers have shown that defining a Product Family Architecture is difficult due to the lack of consistent methodologies in different fields. This work attempts to develop a framework for highly customized production lines using Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams and Design Structure Matrix (DSM) tools. A UML class diagram will be used to analyze the genetic code of different products by identifying their components, properties, and attributes. Then, a system modeling tool, DSM, will be used to visualize product complexity assembly. DSM will help determine the product family architecture by listing all component variants in a particular product. The study is conducted in a window manufacturing industry with high product variation, which varies according to customer requirements. This paper aims to create a model that can be used to pave the way for further research areas, such as discrete event simulation and assembly tasks, with each product having a unique identification process.