An effective design freeze strategy for establishing design rules in modular product development

Abstract

In rapidly changing market conditions, the timing of a product release is crucial for its success. Design iteration, especially between modules, poses a significant challenge in the development of modular products. This study proposes an effective design freeze strategy as design rules aimed at reducing such iterations by finalising specific tasks before others. However, applying a design freeze without considering dependencies among tasks may lead to the unfreezing of previously frozen tasks in the subsequent design and result in the restart of the design process. In response to this issue, this paper presents a methodology that identifies a set of dependent tasks to be frozen simultaneously, constituting freeze alternatives. Furthermore, the methodology evaluates the reduction of rework due to design freeze for each alternative and determines the effective design freeze strategy that can most efficiently eliminate design iterations. The proposed approach employs a network representation of the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) and network analysis techniques to determine the optimal alternative. A case study on a formula car is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested strategy.