scholarly journals Modular product architecture to manage product development complexity

Author(s):  
Ahm Shamsuzzoha ◽  
Petri Helo ◽  
Sujan Piya ◽  
Mohammed Alkahtani
Author(s):  
Kevin R. Allen ◽  
Susan Carlson-Skalak

Abstract Product architecture can have a significant impact on a product’s life-cycle and its development time. Modular product architecture allows for easy disassembly upon product retirement and allows for wide product variety. In a small company, the team structure of the company can correspond to the modules, and modules can be used across product lines. By using similar modules from one generation to the next, product development time can be reduced. The methodology described in this paper gives a small company the framework from which to develop modular products.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1018 ◽  
pp. 555-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günther Schuh ◽  
Michael Schiffer ◽  
Casimir Ortlieb

Today many producing companies face two major challenges: they have to maintain a high degree of product differentiation whilst reducing costs through economies of scale. One way to face these challenges is the development of modular product architectures that allow to produce a number of product variants and product generations using one single architecture. The complexity for the product development has thereby increased since expected future changes in products have to be anticipated in the designing process to minimize modification costs. The more robust a product architecture is regarding future changes, the longer an architecture can be used which directly translates into economic advantages for the company. Most companies though struggle to apply the required processes and tools to develop scenario-robust product architectures for their portfolio. This paper aims at the presentation of a methodology to develop alternative, scenario-robust product architecture designs.


Author(s):  
Mohammed Alkahtani ◽  
Petri Helo ◽  
Sujan Piya ◽  
Ahm Shamsuzzoha

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 2057-2066
Author(s):  
Nicola Viktoria Ganter ◽  
Behrend Bode ◽  
Paul Christoph Gembarski ◽  
Roland Lachmayer

AbstractOne of the arguments against an increased use of repair is that, due to the constantly growing progress, an often already outdated component would be restored. However, refurbishment also allows a component to be modified in order to upgrade it to the state of the art or to adapt it to changed requirements. Many existing approaches regarding Design for Upgradeability are based on a modular product architecture. In these approaches, however, only the upgradeability of a product is considered through the exchange of components. Nevertheless, the exchange and improvement of individual component regions within a refurbishment has already been successfully carried out using additive processes. In this paper, a general method is presented to support the reengineering process, which is necessary to refurbish and upgrade a damaged component. In order to identify which areas can be replaced in the closed system of a component, the systematics of the modular product architecture are used. This allows dependencies between functions and component regions to be identified. Thus, it possible to determine which functions can be integrated into the intended component.


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tucker J. Marion ◽  
Marc H. Meyer ◽  
Gloria Barczak

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Sand ◽  
P. Gu ◽  
G. Watson

Product modularization aims to improve the overall design, manufacturing, operational, and post-retirement characteristics of products by designing or redesigning the product architectures. A successful modular product can assist the reconfiguration of products, while reducing the lead-time of design and manufacturing and improving the ability for upgrading, maintenance, customization and recycling. This paper presents a new modular design method called the House Of Modular Enhancement (HOME) for product redesign. Information from various aspects of the product design, including functional requirements, product architecture and life cycle requirements, is incorporated in the method to help ensure that a modularized product would achieve the objectives. The HOME method has been implemented in a software system. A case study will be presented to illustrate the HOME method and the software.


2014 ◽  
Vol 907 ◽  
pp. 197-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günther Schuh ◽  
Stefan Rudolf ◽  
Jens Arnoscht ◽  
Bastian Lüdtke

Companies producing in high-wage countries are increasingly challenged due to the necessary differentiation and cost pressure. The modular product platform approach is more and more used by these companies for structuring their product range in order to realise and deploy commonalities. This type of product architecture enables companies to produce nearly individual products without losing economies of scale across the product range. Economies of scale due to communalities result in decreased process costs, reduced development lead-time by uncoupling the development of modules and products as well as the augmentation of the technical product robustness. However, the design of modular product platforms itself causes new challenges regarding the product structuring, the process and organizational design. Recent approaches for the development of communalities through modular product platforms are focusing only the product itself. Since costs are mainly determined in the development phase but caused later in the production phase both product and production have to be taken into account. Furthermore, modular product platforms have a higher variety and diversity of elements since they represent the components, modules and functions of the entire product program. This paradigm shift from an integral product design to a modular product structure cannot be controlled with existing models and methods. Our paper confirms commonality has to be optimized by focusing both the product and production. Therefore we have designed a descriptive framework (commonality model) to display and optimize the commonality both in the product and the process. Furthermore, a product architecture development process that is superior to the individual product development processes was developed for the systematic design of commonalities. The approach presented in this paper focusses on the interactions between product and process parameters. In our approach these interactions will first be displayed based on the graph theory and then be optimized applying sensitivity analysis. By varying relevant parameters both on the product and process side constitutive features can be derived determining product and process standards in order to enhance the overall commonality level.


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