Case-based evolutionary design for mass customization

Reuse suggests itself as a natural technique to satisfy the increasing diversity of customers' demands with mass production efficiency. This paper proposes a case-based evolutionary design (CBED) approach to achieving the goal of mass customization. The essence of the approach lies in a concept of the case class and a product family architecture centered design process model. Issues associated with the approach are discussed in the context of CBED for mass customization, involving case content, memory organization, indexing, retrieval, and adaptation. Keywords: Case-based design; Mass customization; Product design; Object-oriented; Design automation.