RESEARCH ARTICLE
Using a Configuration System to Design Toilets and Place Installation Shafts
Anders Kudsk*, 1, Lars Hvam2, Christian Langhoff Thuesen3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 7
First Page: 158
Last Page: 169
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-7-158
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801307010158
Article History:
Received Date: 9/10/2013Revision Received Date: 21/10/2013
Acceptance Date: 29/10/2013
Electronic publication date: 15/11/2013
Collection year: 2013
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The aim of this research is to discover how configuration systems can support a product’s design process when a high degree of variation is required and a very open or endless space exists for possible configurations. The article is based on an industrial case involving a firm that wishes to offer a bathroom configurator to architects. The aim of the configurator is to help architects design a bathroom according to relevent requirements and norms. In offering the configurator, the firm aims to enable a design that can be coordinated with a prefabricated installation shaft sold by the firm, and also to create customer leads. Four scenarios are developed for how design can be supported by four different types of configuration technologies. The four scenarios are evaluated in relation to a number of functional and technical requirements. The scenarios indicate that a good and varied range of opportunities exist for using configuration systems in the construction industry. They also show that it can be done without fundamentally changing the present process.