An integrated approach for new vehicle program launching and associated manufacturing systems deployment,is presented in this paper.To overcome weaknesses and difficulties in the traditional production distribution (PD) network models,the case based reasoning is first applied to generate an initial network configuration based on the collected localization case base.Secondly,and economic model of performance evaluation of existing manufacturing facilities is developed to identify the advantages in location sensitive production factors for various components in order to take full advantages of local and global production factors.Finally,a modified PD model is developed to optimize the overall network deployment.Various deployment scenarios,such as minimizing manufacturing cost,maximizing profitability or promotion of early market entry,can be analyzed and testified.A typical case study of launching a new vehicle program in China is also presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach.
