Cold room product configurator

The Cold Room is a complex product characterized by numerous:

defined and certified market components that are the basis of the cell
assembly design criteria and rules

In the case of customizable products, the design and assembly criteria and rules can be combined, resulting in an enormous variety of products.

With standard products, the whole company operates with stable and defined rules, salespeople can sell in the catalog with a few variants and the design and production have defined operational criteria; in general there are no obvious problems.

In the case of highly customized products, each product has different rules and design criteria and must be treated as a single product. Obviously this problem can undermine the commercial and design areas of a company that has always operated with very standardized products.

Without the aid of specific tools, to address the complexity of the product along the workflow that goes from the customer’s request to production, an open bill is developed, i.e. a complex list of components involved in the composition of the product.

From this the salesman, often assisted by a designer and according to the customer’s requests, selects the components that are the constituents of the desired product using the multiple criteria and rules. In this way the bill that characterizes the customer’s request is defined as “closed” (product structure) and valued in costs and services and can become an order.

The bill “closed” at a commercial level, with the help of the design rules suggested to the designer, enters the design where it is detailed and completed; finally it is shared with the production for the manufacture of that specific product.

The traditional approach in a field of customized products presents a number of problems:

The formalization of the customer’s needs in the product always requires the presence of a qualified designer, holder of the technical know-how of the product and therefore able to manage the complexity of the selection rules for closing the list
Failure to collaborate with a specialized technical figure may give rise to errors in the composition of the products or to an incorrect translation of the requirements into technical specifications.

RuleDesigner is able to face the current trend towards highly customized product configurations and designs by supporting all phases of product definition.

With Ruledesigner, in fact, through the description of the rules it is possible to automate processes in the commercial area by generating estimates and commercial offers in a guided way with all the graphic documents (drawings, models, etc. useful for the customer). In the design area, the entire product design and configuration process can be automated by describing the criteria and rules known to the designer to generate closed lists, drawings, models and cycles.

With the right tools, the problem of product customization can become an opportunity. With the RuleDesigner system it is in fact possible to develop in a short time a Knowledge Based System that contains and makes operational all the design rules for the composition of the bill and all the actions for the automated generation of estimates, models, drawings, etc.

The sales officials guided by the rules are able to define without errors the specific product requested by the customer, the designers no longer spend improper time in assisting salesmen or in correcting incorrect orders.