Agent-based optimization for product family design

This paper presents a two-step approach to determine the optimal platform level for a selected set of product families and their variants. The first step employs a multi-objective optimization using an agent-based framework to determine the Pareto-design solutions for a given set of modules. The second step performs a post optimization analysis that includes application of the quality loss function to determine the optimal platform level. The post optimization analysis yields the optimal platform level for a related set of product families and their variants. We demonstrate the working of the proposed method by using an example problem.