Product Architecture Design Process for Model-based Knowledge Management

In a recent highly competitive global marketplace, many manufacturing companies have been tackling integrity of varying high-end performances and cost reduction of product. They are utilizing product families to diversify and enhance the product performance by simultaneously designing multiple products under commonalization and standardization. The key to rationale and successful product family design is product architecture. Product architecture is the scheme by which the functions and the customer's requirements are allocated to components. Good product architecture yields a successful product family. Platform design of automobiles, i.e., Volkswagen's A-Platform, is a representative example, which shows the power of established product architecture. In order to establish superior product architecture, a designer should grasp mappings between customer's requirements, functions and components, and commonalize the components while diversifying the target customer's requirement.