Abstract: Satisfaction of individual customer requirements has increasingly become essential for manufacturing firms to earn their superior competences, a key approach to which is rationally carrying out modular product configuration during mass customization. Product configuration design under modular architecture in product family toward a computational means is discussed, and a mathematic model to maximize comprehensive performances with a mixture of views from customer’s needs is subsequently formulated. Based on the consequent framework, a simulated annealing technique is applied to numerically optimize the problem in a systematical form. In addition, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to distribute weights for performance and requirement factors. Combining the simulation result and software implementation of a concrete case—VA impeller washer, the method advanced shows its validity and promise. Therefore, it provides another practical numerical tool of modular configuration design for mass customization.

Key words: Customer requirements, Mass customization, Modularization, Module instance, Product configuration