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. This work introduces a method - SMDP (standardization and modularization driven by process effort) - for focusing engineering effort when applying standardization or modularization on product platform components. SMDP calculates the total design effort from current to future generations of the platform following 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. The contribution of this work is in using an estimation of design effort as the basis for decision in contrast to commonly used static measures of components' interactions. Such a computational approach allows conducting sensitivity studies that address the subjective nature of various estimations needed for exercising SMDP. SMDP is illustrated in a product platform design of an external-drum plate-setter for the digital prepress printing market. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.