| Hi-index | 0.00 |
When customizing their product lines, manufacturers attempt to fulfill the requirements of the customers within the technical and economical constraints of the manufacturing environment. Product line design is a recurrent process that aims at finding the proper balance between the exploration of new product alternatives and the exploitation of the known selling potential of the available variants. This paper offers a framework where, driven by the interaction of customer preferences and the reallocation of manufacturing resources, product families emerge from technically feasible product alternatives.