SUSTAINABILITY OF MODULAR PRODUCT FAMILIES
Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Gaetano Cascini, Marco Cantamessa, Dorian Marjanovic, Frederico Rotini
Author: Bahns, Tammo; Beckmann, Gregor; Gebhardt, Nicolas; Krause, Dieter
Series: ICED
Institution: Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Germany
Section: Product Modularisation, Product Architecture, Systems Engineering, Product Service Systems
Page(s): 185-194
ISBN: 978-1-904670-70-4
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
A global customer base demanding highly individual products often forces companies to offer a wide range of products. Commonality within modular product families allows great product variety through lower internal variety of components and processes. Companies then struggle with sustainability of modular product families, that is, managing commonality across the product family lifecycle when modular product families are changed to react to new customer demands. Based on a literature review, the current support from academia for handling the sustainability of modular product families is presented. The findings are consolidated into a conceptual schema. The subsequent successful use of the conceptual schema in the process planning of a medium-sized enterprise, developing and producing elevators, identified further factors that influence the sustainability of modular product families. These factors will be addressed in the future, with support from academia.
Keywords: Product Families, Product Structuring, Design Management, Engineering Change