Product family design and platform-based product development has received much attention over the last decade. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research in this field. A decision framework is introduced to reveal a holistic view of product family design and platform-based product development, encompassing both front-end and back-end issues. The review is organized according to various topics in relation to product families, including fundamental issues and definitions, product portfolio and product family positioning, platform-based product family design, manufacturing and production, as well as supply chain management. Major challenges and future research directions are also discussed.

Product family design and platform-based product development: a state-of-the-art review

In an effort to improve customization for today's highly competitive global marketplace, many companies are utilizing product families and platform-based product development to increase variety, shorten lead times, and reduce costs The key to a successful product family is the product platform from which it is derived either by adding, removing, or substituting one or more modules to the platform or by scaling the platform in one or more dimensions to target specific market niches This nascent field of engineering design has matured rapidly in the past decade, and this paper provides a comprehensive review of the flurry of research activity that has occurred during that time to facilitate product family design and platform-based product development for mass customization Techniques for identifying platform leveraging strategies within a product family are reviewed along with metrics for assessing the effectiveness of product platforms and product families Special emphasis is placed on optimization approaches and artificial intelligence techniques to assist in the process of product family design and platform-based product development Web-based systems for product platform customization are also discussed Examples from both industry and academia are presented throughout the paper to highlight the benefits of product families and product platforms The paper concludes with a discussion of potential areas of research to help bridge the gap between planning and managing families of products and designing and manufacturing them

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Product platform design and customization: Status and promise

After the industrial revolution, the literature has mentioned different “principles” to allow a better management of the production and product life cycle activities. For example the principle of standardization was first mentioned in the literature by an automobile engineer and placed in a real context by Henry Ford. Standardization has made possible the configuration of different products using a large set of common components. Another strategy called “modularization” was first mentioned in the literature in the 60s. The modularity proposed to group components of products in a module for practical production objectives. Today, modularity and standardization are promising tools in product family development because they allow to design a variety of products using the same modules of components called “platforms”. Using platforms allows important family design savings and easy manufacturing. In this paper we give a literature review of the platform concept with a special interest on the efficient product family development. This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 mentions the general context of modularity to develop product variety. Section 2 details the importance of product architectures in the literature for a modular design. Section 3 points on some important works that apply some modular and platform methodologies.

Modular and platform methods for product family design: literature analysis

Introducing a platform strategy in product development

The rationale of developing product families with respect to satisfying diverse customer needs with reasonable costs, i.e., mass customization, has been well recognized in both industry and academia. Earlier research often highlights isolated and successful empirical studies with limited attempt to explore the theoretical foundations surrounding this economically important class of engineering design problem. This paper investigates the fundamental issues underlying product family development. The concept of Architecture of Product Family (APF) is introduced as a conceptual structure and overall logical organization of generating a family of products. APF constructs, including common bases, differentiation enablers, and configuration mechanisms, are discussed from both sales and engineering perspectives. Also discussed are variety generation methods with regard to producing custom products based on the modular product architecture and configure-to-order product development. To support APF-based product fa...

Architecture of Product Family: Fundamentals and Methodology:

Platform and modular concepts as adopted by Volkswagen are future-oriented strategies for enhancing the range from the customer viewpoint, and at the same time they are the basis for the technical and organizational implementation of a marketing philosophy adjusted to customer requirements.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-642-60374-7_12.pdf

B. Wilhelm

Papers

Platform and Modular Concepts at Volkswagen — Their Effects on the Assembly Process