Abstract

Because of a few characteristics of complex product, such as the variety of its components, and the structural complexity and so on, the realization of the rapid design of complex product requires combination of a variety of theories and methods that support product’s rapid design. Therefore, this study assesses complex products and puts forward a new rapid design method based on general structure model and reusable parts resource. First of all, the characteristics and implementation process of this method is summarized. Then, the general structure model of the complex product family is established on the basis of modular thoughts, and the definitions of the four vari-size grained abstract concepts are discussed in this model as well as its semantic relationships. The configuration design of the complex products is based on this general structural model, and with the increase of networked product design information, and more and more manufacturing enterprises have built up their own web-based component repositories to store those detailed design information. On account of those, the rapid design process of the complex product is introduced, with configuration design and reusable parts resource as the core. Lastly, an application example (i.e. the conventional beam pumping unit) is presented to verify the feasibility of which has been discussed above.