TOWARDS PRODUCT PLATFORM INTRODUCTION: OPTIMISING COMMONALITY OF COMPONENTS.
Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Gaetano Cascini, Marco CantaMESsa, Dorian Marjanovic, Frederico Rotini
Author: Zapico, Miguel; Eckert, Claudia; Jowers, Iestyn; Earl, Christopher
Series: ICED
Institution: 1: Engineering Concept Centre - NACCO Materials Handling Group, United Kingdom; 2: The Open University, United Kingdom
Section: Product Modularisation, Product Architecture, Systems Engineering, Product Service Systems
Page(s): 023-032
ISBN: 978-1-904670-70-4
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
Companies that design and manufacture products for a wide range of related applications need to offer the right product for each use. A platform design strategy allows designing the product range based on product platforms, where some of the components and systems are common across the range whereas other components are individual for each product variant. This paper presents the problems that a company faces when trying to introduce a platform strategy and outlines a method to find suitable components to be made common. The method is shown with a simple case. The approach uses fuzzy logic to obtain a suitable criterion to assess the overall value of the product line and a genetic algorithm for finding the set of components to be made common.
Keywords: Platform Strategies, Optimisation, Product Families, Simulation, Early Design Phases