Logic workflow structure modeling of product variant design and activity path generating

Purpose - Product variant design process consists of a series of asynchronous activities. These activities and the logic relations among them are important in constructing general logic workflow structure, which is the foundation of deriving an activity path for variant design business. Traditional process modeling approaches have not defined activities for product variant design and cannot describe the complex relations among these activities because of the lack of logic express elements. Thus, logic workflow structure modeling method is anticipated to meet the requirements of logic description and path generation in product variant design application. This paper aims to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach - The paper identifies the variant design modes of different types of parts and defines their variant design activities. The procedure of constructing general logic workflow structure of product variant design is proposed. Simultaneously, the principles of inferring logic relations among activities are put forward based on their adjacency information and connectivity probability. A general logic workflow structure of product variant design is constructed. Based on this, activity path corresponding to a variant design business can be generated. The algorithm of generating activity path is designed as well. In addition, Boolean vectors of activity path, based on the functional contour matrix of polychromatic set theory, can be inferred, which denotes the functional character of activity path. Findings - A general logic workflow structure for product variant design has been established, which comprises variant design activities and basic process logic nodes. The logic relations among activities can be inferred based on their in-degree/out-degree and connectivity probability. The function character of activity path can also be expressed based on the polychromatic set theory. Originality/value - The combination of variant design activity and basic process logic node makes diverse variant design business descriptions possible in a general workflow structure. The proposed approach provides evidences for designer to plan and develop product variant design system effectively.