Towards the development of commonal product programs

Issue
4
Start Page
209
End Page
218
Citation
The 19th International Conference on Engineering Design, (ICED 2013)
Contribution to Conference
The 19th International Conference on Engineering Design, (ICED 2013)
Publisher
Design Society
ISBN of container
978-1-904670-44-5
978-1-904670-45-2
978-1-904670-46-9
978-1-904670-47-6
978-1-904670-48-3
978-1-904670-49-0
978-1-904670-50-6
978-1-904670-51-3
978-1-904670-52-0
Today many companies encounter the challenge of reducing internal variety by developing modular product families. Yet even more potential for reducing internal variety can be gained by even striving for carry-over across product families as industrial case studies showed. A holistic corporate product program strategy for reducing variety supports the identification and exploitation of this potential. How this strategy can be defined in specific corporate context is outlined in this paper. Based from the attributes of an ideal product program steps for definition of product structure strategies are proposed. The resulting development tasks need a deep understanding about a solution that suits corporate needs for differentiation and standardization best. This can be gained by analysis of tearing forces towards differentiation and standardization and comparison of possible solutions that enable commonality in different ways and by this have different effects. To support evaluation of these solutions a complexity cost estimation method is proposed complying with the lack of detailed information in the conceptual phase.
Subjects
Commonality
Portfolio management
Product families
Product program
Product structuring
DDC Class
600: Technik
620: Ingenieurwissenschaften