PRODUCT PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT: AN APPROACH FOR PRODUCTS IN THE CONCEPTUAL STAGES OF DESIGN

摘要

Most design for Manufacturing (dfM) applications to date have focused on a particular model of a product. Recent drive for faster times-to-market are drawing attention of companies like ABB, BMW, Ebara, Nissan and Toshiba to product architecture, i.e., achieving platforms that cover diverse market segments over multiple generations. The trend in industry also has shown two major types of platform development activity: architecture innovation and platform refinement. Architecture innovation addresses new products as well as amorphous products such as system and service products. Platform refinement concerns mostly existing products and involves identifying current platform base, and optimizing its structure. The critical steps in platform design are the definition of specific drivers, and the identification of complexity and requirement metrics. Complexity and requirement metrics contribute to developing the value model under specific drivers for the desired platform. This paper discusses the past platform related work from academia in these perspectives, proposes a 5-step methodology co-developed with Toshiba along with their pilot examples, and a future research agenda.