Recommendation Method for Build-to-Order Products Considering Substitutability of Specifications and Stock Consumption Balance of Components

This study focuses on a stock reduction method for build-to-order (BTO) products to flow surplus parts out to the market using sale by recommendation. A sale by recommendation is repeated in an each business negotiation using a recommended configuration selected from the inventory of parts to minimize the stock deficiency or excess at the end of a certain period of the production plan. The method is based on the potential of a customer specification to be replaced by an alternative one if the alternative one is close to the initial customer specification. A recommendation method is proposed that decides the recommended product configuration by balancing the part consumption so that the alternative specification of the configuration is close enough to the initial customer specification for substitutability. The method was evaluated by a simulation using real BTO manufacturing data and the result demonstrates that the unbalance of the consumption of parts inventory is improved.