An Efficient Branch and Bound Algorithm for Interface Based Modular Product Design and Performance Evaluation

Abstract

In our earlier work, we have proposed a cyberinfrastructurebased collaboration system for modular product design. One of the main components of the system is a design repository to which suppliers can upload the descriptions of their components using machinereadable, interfacebased component description language, so that manufacturers can refer to the descriptions during product design phases. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithmic approach based on a branchandbound (BnB) algorithm to support product design using the interfacebased component descriptions stored in the design repository. This product design problem is categorized into a planning problem, whose complexity is known as nondeterministic polynomialtime (NP) hard. For performance evaluation, we compare the performance of the branchandbound algorithm with that of a depthfirst search (DFS) algorithm, which is an exhaustive search method. This paper describes the details of the proposed branchandbound algorithm using a case study and experimental results are discussed.