Standardization and Modularization Driven by Minimizing Overall Process Effort

Faster Product development is a major goal for companies in competitive markets. Product platform architectures support planning for addressing diverse markets and fulfilling future market desires. Applying standardization or modularization on product platform components leverages current product design effort across future products, reducing overall development costs. This work introduces a method for focusing engineering effort when applying standardization or modularization on product platform components. The method calculates the total design effort from current to future generations of the platform, as obtained by standardization or modularization of components. By comparing the total design cost of different simulations, we can direct the design team to standardization or modularization opportunities. This process has been successfully applied to two different product platforms. One is External-Drum Plate-setter for the digital prepress printing market (introduced here) and the other is TOW anti-tank missile launching system for the military market.Copyright © 2003 by ASME