A multi-principle module identification method for product platform design

In today’s competitive global business environment, platform strategy presents an opportunity for manufacturing companies to juggle increased customer demand for customized products and the inherited complexity and increased development cost that comes with it. The goal of this paper is to support module identification as an essential part of a module-based platform strategy approach. Based on various existing methods, this paper abstracted three principles, which include an internal clustering principle, an external independence principle, and an overall stability principle. The three principles should be holistically considered, and be simultaneously satisfied during the module identification. Both conceptual and mathematical modeling of the proposed multi-principle module identification method are elaborated. Then an improved strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm (ISPEA2) is used to address the multi-principle module identification problem and find the Pareto-optimal set. A fuzzy compromise selection method base on fuzzy set theory is also used to select the best compromise Pareto solution. An industrial case study in a turbo expander manufacturing company is provided to illustrate practical applications of the research. Finally, the result obtained by the proposed approach is compared with other established optimization approaches.抽象的目的研究多准则约束下的产品模块划分方法, 为企业 建立稳健的模块化产品平台奠定基础。方法采用改进的多目标进化算法对建立的多准则模块 划分数学模型求解, 并采用模糊集合评价机制进 行最优解的寻取, 得到基于多准则模块划分方法 的产品模块划分结果。结论通过改进的多目标进化算法求解多准则模块划分 模型, 能够得到有效支持产品平台设计的产品模 块划分方案。 通过与已有优化方法的比较验证了 本文提出的多准则模块划分方法的优越性。