A product platform concept development method

Abstract

Quality function deployment (QFD) was initially developed to aid in designing a quality product by interconnecting customer needs in a market segment with technical requirements (TRs). It can assist in improving product quality but does not have a function to examine TRs across the major market segments serviced by a company's product lines and to aid in developing the modular product platform concept. In this paper, we present a product platform concept development method that aids in developing the modular platform concept as well as improving an understanding of product family design. This method is conducted in three steps. The first step is to identify platform TRs from QFD by classifying TRs into either constant or variant TRs. The second step is to construct the platform planning chart, which is to identify the relationship between basic components and TRs and calculate degree of variety (DV) of components. Finally, the platform concept is explored on design structure matrix with DV. This paper uses an electric razor example to illustrate the proposed method.