Sustainable product family configuration based on a platform strategy

A product family has been applied to minimise development costs and maximise profits. Since products in the product family have similar functions and product architecture, the product family has high potential for sustainable product in order to prolong the lifespan of the products by sharing new and remanufactured modules. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to identify sustainable product family configuration by integrating sustainability performance and a platform strategy. A concept of a sustainable platform is introduced to enhance reusability based on high compatibility in terms of space, function, and interface. The sustainable platform and remanufacturable modules are used as constraints in the proposed method. A multi-objective design optimisation approach is then applied to determine the optimal configuration of the product family in terms of sustainability. The sustainability is mathematically modelled to quantify three kinds of performance: environmental impact as environmental performance, profits as economic performance, and customer demand as social performance. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a case study is performed with a family of electric shavers. This paper shows how a sustainable product family can reduce negative environmental impact while satisfying customer demand and sustaining profit by using remanufactured modules.