In modern manufacturing, customizing products to meet diverse customer needs is crucial for establishing a competitive advantage. However, in Engineering-to-Order (ETO) products, high customization demands from customers lead to a wide variety of product variations. This variety results in longer design times and lead times, as well as design processes that rely heavily on experience and tacit knowledge. To rationalize such custom design processes, design configurators are used.
Inoue et al. (Wed,) studied this question.