A method of product family design of component configuration under supplier price discount

Product family design of component configuration is commonly used to provide higher product variety for satisfying diversified customer needs. To reduce the cost and development time and improve quality of products, companies quite often consider sourcing, however, supplier price discount could affect product family of component configuration; a multi-objective mathematical model with the objectives of maximizing the market share and minimizing the cost of a product family is established. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is adopted to solve the multi-objective optimization model and a case study is conducted to illustrate the feasibility and rationality of the proposed method. The results show that the method can help decision makers make better trade-off in the multi-objective of product family design of component configuration.