A Quantitative Approach to Determining Product Platform Extent

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Conner Seepersad ◽  
Gabriel Hernandez ◽  
Janet K. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Absorption Chillers ◽  
Linear Physical Programming ◽  
Individual Product ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Individual

Abstract In many cases, capabilities for providing product variety may be enhanced efficiently and effectively by creating families of products based on product platforms. However, the actual extent of a product platform — the range of products based upon the platform — is usually determined qualitatively. We present a quantitative method for determining the number of scaleable platforms for a specific market as well as the distribution of products among multiple platforms, recognizing that multiple factors determine optimal platform extent and that these factors often conflict. We model these factors quantitatively, at either the systems level or the individual product level, using the compromise Decision Support Problem including concepts derived from linear physical programming. We apply this approach to an example study of a family of absorption chillers. Our emphasis is on the approach rather than the results, per se.

A Product Variety Tradeoff Evaluation Method for a Family of Cordless Drill Transmissions

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn G. Conner ◽  
Joseph P. De Kroon ◽  
Farrokh Mistree
Keyword(s):  
Evaluation Method ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Product Performance ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Individual Product ◽  
Alternative Product ◽  
Per Se

Abstract In this paper we present the Product Variety Tradeoff Evaluation Method for assessment of alternative product platforms in product family design. The Product Variety Tradeoff Evaluation Method is an attention-directing tool for evaluating tradeoffs between commonality and individual product performance for product platform alternatives with differing levels of commonality. We apply the Product Variety Tradeoff Evaluation Method to a case study in transmission redesign for a family of cordless drills. The emphasis in this paper is placed on the method rather than on the results, per se.

Introduction of a Product Family Penalty Function Using Physical Programming

2002 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achille Messac ◽  
Michael P. Martinez ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Penalty Function ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Physical Programming ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Scaling Parameters ◽  
The Common ◽  
Selection Of

In an effort to increase customization for today’s highly competitive global markets, many companies are looking to product families to increase product variety and shorten product lead-times while reducing costs. The key to a successful product family is the common product platform around which the product family is derived. Building on our previous work in product family design, we introduce a product family penalty function (PFPF) in this paper to aid in the selection of common and scaling parameters for families of products derived from scalable product platforms. The implementation of the PFPF utilizes the powerful physical programming paradigm to formulate the problem in terms of physically meaningful parameters. To demonstrate the proposed approach, a family of electric motors is developed and compared against previous results. We find that the PFPF enables us to properly balance commonality and performance within the product family through the judicious selection of the common parameters that constitute the product platform and the scaling parameters used to instantiate the product family.

Design of Hierarchic Platforms for Customizable Products

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Hernandez ◽  
Janet K. Allen ◽  
Farrokh Mistree
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Product Performance ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Electric Motors ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Individual Product ◽  
Geometric Space ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Levels

The objective in product platform design is to synthesize a set of components that will be shared by a number of product variants considering potential sacrifices in individual product performance that result from parts sharing. A good platform strategy should allow us to specify different levels of commonality for the various features and components of the product family in order to reduce the impact of commonality on performance. In this paper, we formulate the design of platforms for customizable products as a problem of optimization of access in a geometric space. This approach allows us to develop systematically hierarchic product platforms with multiple levels of commonality. We illustrate the proposed approach with a case example: the design of a product platform for a line of customizable electric motors.

A Product Platform Concept Exploration Method for Product Family Design

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Simpson ◽  
Jonathan R. A. Maier ◽  
Farrokh Mistree
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Customer Requirements ◽  
Global Marketplace ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Concept Exploration ◽  
Per Se

Abstract Today’s highly competitive, global marketplace is redefining the way companies do business. Many companies are being faced with the challenge of providing as much variety as possible for the market with as little variety as possible between products in order to maintain economies of scale while satisfying a wide range of customer requirements. Developing a family of products — a group of related products derived from a common product platform — provides an efficient and effective means to realize sufficient product variety to satisfy a range of customer demands. In this paper the Product Platform Concept Exploration Method (PPCEM) is presented, providing a Method that facilitates the synthesis and Exploration of a common Product Platform Concept that can be scaled into an appropriate family of products. As an example, the PPCEM is employed to design a family of universal electric motors that are also compared against a benchmark group of individually designed motors. The focus in this paper, however, is on the PPCEM and not on the results, per se.

Decisions in Product Platform Development Projects

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 1550001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter E. Harland ◽  
Haluk Yörür
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Project Managers ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Platform Development ◽  
Product Platform Development

Introducing "product platforms" in companies to achieve competitive advantages, like decreased costs and increased product variety, is a widely recognized strategy in research and industry. Nevertheless, there are certain challenges involved in developing product platforms. In order to address this complexity, we focus on the decision-making perspective of platform development in this paper. Based on a systematic literature review, we identify the decisions in product platform development projects (PPDP) and categorize them. We identified 21 decisions that are made within PPDP, which represent a greater scope of decisions than presented in the literature sources reviewed. The plausibility of these platform project decisions is illustrated with a case study of a perennial platform development project within the automotive supply industry. While most of the literature sources only mention very few decisions, the case study shows the complexity and high number of decisions required for an actual PPDP. In addition, it also recognizes all of the prior reviews of the decisions identified. Unlike in the literature, the decisions in the case study were made over a certain period of time. Therefore, we propose that the dynamics of the decision-making process in PPDP have to be taken into account. The set of PPDP decisions identified will help project managers to structure future PPDPs better and support researchers in building related product platform models.

Designing Product Families for a Changing Market Space

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakesh S. Kulkarni ◽  
Janet K. Allen ◽  
Farrokh Mistree
Keyword(s):  
Pressure Vessels ◽  
Constructal Theory ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Per Se

The Product Platform Constructal Theory Method (PPCTM) provides designers with an approach for synthesizing multiple modes of managing customization in the development of product platforms. An assumption underlying PPCTM is that the extent of the market space is known and is fixed. In this paper, we introduce PPCTM-RCM (Robust to Changes in Market) that facilitates designing product platforms when the extent of the market space is expected to change. The PPCTM-RCM is illustrated via example problem, namely, the design of a product platform for a line of customizable pressure vessels. Our focus in this paper is on highlighting features of the method rather than results per se.

A Genetic Algorithm Based Method for Product Family Design Optimization

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brayan S. D’Souza ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Optimization Method ◽  
General Aviation ◽  
Product Performance ◽  
Individual Product ◽  
The Family ◽  
Gradient Based ◽  
The Individual

Increased commonality in a family of products can simplify manufacturing and reduce the associated costs and lead-times. There is a tradeoff, however, between commonality and individual product performance within a product family, and in this paper we introduce a genetic algorithm based method to help find an acceptable balance between commonality in the product family and desired performance of the individual products in the family. The method uses Design of Experiments to help screen unimportant factors and identify factors of interest to the product family and a multiobjective genetic algorithm, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm, to optimize the performance of the products in the resulting family. To demonstrate implementation of the proposed method, the design of a family of three General Aviation Aircraft is presented along with a product variety tradeoff study to determine the extent of the tradeoff between commonality and individual product performance within the aircraft family. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by comparing the family of aircraft against individually optimized designs and designs obtained from an alternate gradient-based multiobjective optimization method.

Conceptual Structural Features of Modular Product Platforms

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günther Schuh ◽  
Michael Riesener ◽  
Sebastian Barg ◽  
Sebastian Schloesser
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Target System ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Modular Product ◽  
The Individual

Many companies are facing the challenge to extend their degree of external product differentiation whilst reducing internal complexity and costs due to increased economies of scale. Therefore, companies often develop modular product platforms. Initially, they were applied by the automotive industry but since have been exploited to various other industries, e.g. machinery and plant engineering. Based on a modular product platform a number of product variants and product generations can be efficiently derived. However, a simple transfer of the automotive approach to other cases of application is more likely to miss the full potential as well as the targets of a modular product platform. Taking into consideration that a company-specific platform concept is dependent on the influences of the environment the company interacts with, there is no universally applicable solution when it comes to modular product platforms. Hence, modular product platform concepts in industrial practice vary depending on the exogenous circumstances and individually targeted benefits, pursued by the initiative. However, at a certain level of abstraction, modular platform concepts, regardless of individual circumstances or targets, remain comparable through features describing the conceptual structuring. Therefore, the conceptual design of a modular product platform can be described by generally valid and discrete Conceptual Structural Features. From a development perspective, these features and their respective characteristics represent the conceptual design options addressing a company’s individual circumstances and targets. From a retrospective point of view, the features and their respective characteristics can equally be employed to compare existing modular product platform concepts across a vast range of industries and applications with respect to the individual target system. In this paper, seven essential Conceptual Structural Features and associated characteristics are identified. After defining the relevant terminology and reviewing adjacent fields of research, this paper focuses on a broad literature review in the field of Conceptual Structural Features of modular product platforms. A trinomial approach is used to extract the variety of different Conceptual Structural Features. In addition to the derivation of these features from different conceptual approaches for the development of a modular product platform, features of procedure induced design as well as classifying features are identified as relevant Conceptual Structural Features. Companies that configure the identified Conceptual Structural Features concerning their exogenous circumstances and individually targeted benefits are more likely to increase their level of target achievement. After the identification of Conceptual Structural Features, future research focuses on the development of a method for a context and target compliant development of a modular product platform structuring concept. Hence, companies are enabled to proactively configure the identified Conceptual Structural Features during the early development stage according to the individual platform target system as well as to the exogenous circumstances. Moreover, the results of this paper facilitate a cross-industry discussion on a comparable basis in the form of the identified Conceptual Structural Features among companies applying a modular product platform approach.

A Quantitative Approach for Designing Multiple Product Platforms for an Evolving Portfolio of Products

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Conner Seepersad ◽  
Farrokh Mistree ◽  
Janet K. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Product Development ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Quantitative Approach ◽  
Decision Support Model ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Absorption Chillers ◽  
Associated Production ◽  
Multiple Product

Product variety can be provided more efficiently and effectively by creating families of products based on product platforms. One of the major advantages of the development of product platforms is the facilitation of an overall product development strategy, and an important factor in product development is the evolution of a family of products, including addition and retirement of products as well as changing demand and associated production quantities. In this paper, we present a quantitative approach for designing multiple product platforms for an evolving family of products. The approach is based on the utility-based compromise Decision Support Problem—a multi-objective decision support model with an objective function derived from utility theory. With this approach, a designer can model and consider multiple factors that influence the embodiment of product platforms as well as non-deterministic evolution of a portfolio of products serviced by the product platforms. We apply this approach to an example study of a family of absorption chillers, designed for a variable marketplace. Our emphasis is on the approach rather than the results, per se.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document