Product Comparison and a Kit of Parts approach

Overview

KOPE Construct was used for two different companies, one a Kit of Parts supplier and the other a System Supplier. These can be described as; Kit of Parts - a series of premade panel configurations, with fixed sizes, and system - panels could vary between a range of minimum and maximum dimensions, meaning all panels were bespoke for every project.

Both companies tasked KOPE with codifying the rules and constraints of their products to perform inside the KOPE platform.

This project was developed to support professionals without experience of the KOPE platform to apply their skills and knowledge to their own products.

The outcome was the ability for users to quickly iterate through different design solutions or design changes with KOPE Construct and automatically obtain important metrics such as quantities, costs, or carbon emissions.

What we did

The companies products were similar in terms of components and systems, as both of them were external framed timber wall cassettes, but had very different processes. The main difference was that one of had a Kit of Parts (a series of premade panel configurations, with fixed sizes) and the other was a system (panels could vary between a range of minimum and maximum dimensions, meaning all panels were bespoke for every project). The KOPE Construct platform supports both companies with a single delivery team to enable cross-knowledge sharing.

On the Kit of Parts pilot, the workflow consisted of the creation of a database and a user interface where the supplier could add, modify, and remove all the different premade parts the product library was made up of. KOPE Construct's optimisation engine was able to provide the user with multiple options for how the pieces could be configured to create the required design. One of the biggest challenges KOPE had to overcome was to ensure the customisation of the designs to better accommodate the product requirements and increase standardisation. This process resulted in reduced overall costs for the designs.

On the System project, the workflow created by KOPE Construct was composed of two steps; the first assessed the wall arrangement where their product was going to be applied, and subdivided them into constructible panels, based on the product constraints. KOPE collaborated closely with the manufacturers to come up with a series of strategies that the optimisation engine could use to give the user the best possible solution based on their project needs. During the second step, KOPE populated the panels with the system components by following the rules the manufacturer had provided. The major challenge on this project was to collaboratively understand what the rules for the system were, and how it behaved in different scenarios.

Results

Two completely different and fully working activities inside KOPE Construct, supported the clients with their adoption and implementation, as well as providing insight into the future platform roadmap of requirements.

The manufacturers received access to an innovative platform that reduced the estimation times and KOPE learned reciprocally about a new offsite system in depth.

These insights and collaborative working meant that KOPE also developed a deeper understanding of how the software could benefit the MMC industry and informed the  future roadmap.