COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRODUCT MODULARISATION METHODS

Modularity has many benefits. Several methods have arisen to create modular products. In this paper three modularity methods that have been well established in academia and used in industry are compared against one another. These are Function Structure Heuristics, Design Structure Matrix, and Modular Function Deployment. These methods are applied to a cordless drill to show how they perform for a single product. In addition, they are applied to a saw of the same family of products to see how the methods work for a product family. We find that the methods all give different suggestions for a modular architecture for the drill. We also find that the methods give suboptimal results in thc case of a product family. We also tested the repeatability of the methods. It varied between 60% and 90%.