[Paper Review] Towards Electronic Shopping of Composite Product

Mark Sh. Levin|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 3, 2012

Product Development and Customization42 references3 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a framework for electronic shopping of composite (modular) products using hierarchical morphological multicriteria design (HMMD), enabling multicriteria selection, combinatorial synthesis from components, and aggregation of multiple product prototypes. It integrates ordinal priorities and compatibility estimates to generate optimized, customer-centric configurations through knapsack-like and multiple-choice optimization models, validated via numerical examples including product repair plans and trajectories.

ABSTRACT

In the paper, frameworks for electronic shopping of composite (modular) products are described: (a) multicriteria selection (product is considered as a whole system, it is a traditional approach), (b) combinatorial synthesis (composition) of the product from its components, (c) aggregation of the product from several selected products/prototypes. The following product model is examined: (i) general tree-like structure, (ii) set of system parts/components (leaf nodes), (iii) design alternatives (DAs) for each component, (iv) ordinal priorities for DAs, and (v) estimates of compatibility between DAs for different components. The combinatorial synthesis is realized as morphological design of a composite (modular) product or an extended composite product (e.g., product and support services as financial instruments). Here the solving process is based on Hierarchical Morphological Multicriteria Design (HMMD): (i) multicriteria selection of alternatives for system parts, (ii) composing the selected alternatives into a resultant combination (while taking into account ordinal quality of the alternatives above and their compatibility). The aggregation framework is based on consideration of aggregation procedures, for example: (i) addition procedure: design of a products substructure or an extended substructure ('kernel') and addition of elements, and (ii) design procedure: design of the composite solution based on all elements of product superstructure. Applied numerical examples (e.g., composite product, extended composite product, product repair plan, and product trajectory) illustrate the proposed approaches.

Motivation & Objective

• To address the limitations of traditional electronic shopping by enabling dynamic, customer-driven configuration of composite products.
• To develop a systematic method for synthesizing modular products from components using multicriteria decision-making and compatibility constraints.
• To introduce aggregation techniques that combine multiple selected prototypes into new, optimized composite solutions.
• To support customer-centric design through hierarchical morphological modeling and combinatorial optimization.
• To extend electronic shopping beyond selection to include design and customization of complex, modular systems.

Proposed method

• Models composite products as tree-structured systems with components as leaf nodes and design alternatives (DAs) for each component.
• Assigns ordinal priorities to DAs and estimates compatibility between DAs of different components.
• Applies Hierarchical Morphological Multicriteria Design (HMMD) to select and combine DAs based on quality and compatibility.
• Uses knapsack-like problems to solve component addition and extension procedures, with cost and profit estimates.
• Employs multiple choice problems for new design procedures, where one DA is selected per component under budget constraints.
• Utilizes greedy algorithms based on profit-to-cost ratios (c_i/a_i) to solve optimization problems.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can electronic shopping systems support the combinatorial synthesis of modular products from individual components?
• RQ2 What optimization models can effectively integrate multicriteria selection and compatibility constraints in product configuration?
• RQ3 How can multiple existing product prototypes be aggregated into a new, optimized composite solution?
• RQ4 What role do ordinal priorities and compatibility estimates play in guiding the selection of design alternatives?
• RQ5 How can customer-centric, customizable product configurations be systematically generated using operations research and AI techniques?

Key findings

• The HMMD framework successfully generates optimized composite product configurations by integrating multicriteria selection and compatibility constraints.
• For a budget of 5, the addition procedure yielded a solution: E₂⋆D₁⋆X₁⋆Y₃⋆Z₃⋆O₁⋆G₁ with total profit 7.
• With a budget of 6, the addition procedure produced E₅⋆D₁⋆X₁⋆Y₃⋆Z₁⋆O₁⋆G₂, achieving a total profit of 8.
• Under a budget of 14, the new design procedure generated E₂⋆D₁⋆X₂⋆Y₂⋆Z₁⋆O₁⋆G₂ with total profit 14.
• For a budget of 17, the optimal design was E₅⋆D₃⋆X₁⋆Y₃⋆Z₃⋆O₁⋆G₂, achieving a total profit of 17.
• The numerical examples demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of the proposed frameworks in real-world product configuration tasks.