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Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Harmonizing cross-departmental perspectives on modular product familiesIn order to maintain their competitiveness and to respond effectively to different customer needs, manufacturing companies offer a wide range of product variants. This increasing product variety leads to an increase in variety-induced complexity and thus to rising costs in all departments. The development of modular product families is a proven strategy to handle the large external variety with a relatively small internal variety. Modularization requires not only technical-functional, but also organizational, process-related and strategic aspects from all involved departments in order to create an optimal product architecture. The method of the Life Phases Modularization offers this possibility as it integrates all perspectives of the different departments and tries to harmonize the partially contradictory aspects using the Module Process Chart (MPC). The resulting harmonized module process forms the global optimum for exploiting potentials of modular product families within the entire company. The method was developed almost a decade ago and has been applied and refined over time in several industrial cases. This paper presents the method on the basis of two industrial examples and shows deficits and improvements in a consolidated manner.Publicationtype: Conference PaperScopus© Citations 14 155 207 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Assessing the influence of generational variety on product family structuresIncreasing market dynamics and shorter product development and product life cycles cause firms to develop new products more and more frequently. To satisfy a high future external market variety with low internal complexity, Design for Variety is carried out for initial structuring of the prospective product family. The influence of new to introduce product features on the product components is estimated in order to assess the future role of the components within the system under consideration. With help of graph theory and the graph visualisation and analysis software Cytoscape, the product components are examined regarding their activeness, passiveness and centrality values. For achieving this, a methodical procedure is presented to set up the applied development framework and to compute effect systems as directed graphs. The product components are then evaluated using a portfolio matrix to identify the impact of the increasing generational variety.Publicationtype: Conference PaperScopus© Citations 7 205 226 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Development of a design education platform for an interdisciplinary teaching conceptTeams of engineering students take part in a problem-based learning course, where they develop physical product variants of a robotic system and take part in a competition. Design theory and methodology are part of the teaching concept, including complexity management by platform strategy and modularization. Skills in mechanical engineering, design, numerical optimization, additive manufacturing and use of CAD, PDM and FEM software are improved. The developed robotic systems are divided into different modules, these modules are attached on the Design Education Platform. This paper shows the in-house development of this platform with regard to the requirements from the design education course and technical specifications. In this context, findings from an earlier developed product family architecture of a robotic system as reference are integrated. The product architecture is shown in a module interface graph, displaying the component variety as well as their linkages. A description of the used mechanical and electrical components and their computational as well as communication possibilities is shown. The problem-based learning course and its interdisciplinary teaching concept are presented. First findings are formulated and the resulting products of student teams of summer semester 2019 are shown. These first product variants are the starting point of a product family, with new modules and resulting product variants each semester. The influence of the Design Education Platform on the course is evaluated, with the focus on decreasing the internal work for the lecturers, while student numbers are growing. The outlook shows further possibilities of tasks to fulfill and the use of the system as a cyber-physical system for future product generations.Publicationtype: Conference PaperScopus© Citations 13 116 173