# Design of Personalized Devices--The Tradeoff between Individual Value and Personalization Workload
## 3 Results
### Analysis of the Internal Effects of Personalization  
In parallel with the examination of the relevance of product characteristics for individualization, the workload required for repeated adaptation of the characteristic's specific attributes based on the needs of the individual patient was also investigated. This process focuses on every phase of the lifecycle including product development, procurement, production, quality assurance, and sales [5]. This will allow manufacturers to consider variety-induced complexity at an early stage. For each product characteristic, examinations were conducted to determine which of the processes in the various phases of the product's lifecycle influence the attribute in question. These examinations also consider which of these process steps need to be repeated for individual attributes--work that would not be required when using predefined variant attributes. Furthermore, this phase also needs to identify the processes that need to be added for personalization such as designing the adaptation once the individual requirements have been checked. In order to achieve this, the processes were recorded hierarchically as described by [PERSON] [51]. This means that the main processes of the lifecycle phases are recorded  
Figure 11: Segments of the flow diverter with product characteristics and their relevance for personalization. first. Where there are connections or dependencies between a product characteristic and a process, the sub-processes are also taken into account. This adds increasing layers of detail to the process, potentially right down to the task step level. This facilitates the establishment of a relationship between a product characteristic and a process characteristic such as a tool size or program variable. Process characteristics that are particularly time or cost-intensive to modify such as the repeated customer-specific setup of machines and the procurement of attribute-specific tools are highly relevant here. During personalization, process or tooling costs that could otherwise be allocated to a large number of predefined variants may instead only be assigned to one specific product variant. The additional costs incurred through the use of personalized attributes as opposed to variant attributes are also examined and compared for each product characteristic. For the example of the flow diverter, the processes were recorded accordingly and a relationship was established between the product and process characteristics. In some cases, one process characteristic affected multiple different product characteristics. For example, if the haul-off speed for the braiding process is changed in order to modify the braid angle, this also results in a change to the length of the flow diverter. As a consequence of this, the braiding time also has to be adjusted in order to ensure that the product characteristic _Length_ is not affected. Therefore, recognizing the dependencies between the product characteristic and the process characteristic in terms of determining how a change will propagate if one process characteristic is adjusted is of great importance. The process analysis showed that individualizing the diameter resulted in high costs because the product characteristic _Diameter_ is heavily dependent on the process characteristic _Braid mandrel geometry_. A separate tool (braiding mandrel) would need to be procured for each individual diameter. When personalizing the diameter, the costs of one tool can no longer be split across a large number of parts, as they would be for predefined variants. Individually adjusting the diameter affects a wide range of processes in every phase of the lifecycle including tool specification during product development, tool ordering during purchasing, and installing the tool and adjusting the braiding program during production. As such, personalization of the diameter is not recommended from a complexity perspective.