Product Family Development Research Articles

A Model-Based Approach for the Methodical Development and Configuration of Modular Product Families

This paper shows how a methodical development and configuration of modular product family concepts and their effects on economic targets can be implemented in SysML. For this purpose, different sources of inconsistency between different methodical tools are highlighted and the need for research is shown. As a solution approach, a methodical framework is presented, which can be used to implement product development methods for the developing of modular product family modeling by means of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) in the modeling language SysML. By applying the framework, it is shown on the one hand how a product family of vacuum cleaner robots as a simple example can be modularized in a methodical, model-based manner. On the other hand, a configuration system and an impact model of modular product families are connected with the system model and applied to a product family of laser systems as an industrial use case. This made it clear that the framework can be used to model various methodical topics of product family modeling in a consistent manner, to enable higher-level analyses with the use of MBSE tools. This can reduce errors, decrease effort and increase traceability across different methodical tools.

A METHOD TO CAPTURE AND SHARE PRODUCTION REQUIREMENTS SUPPORTING A COLLABORATIVE PRODUCTION PREPARATION PROCESS

AbstractThe production preparation process (3P) enables collaboration between design and production engineers during product development but its efficiency is limited by the abundance of documentation of manufacturing constraints and capabilities. Empirical studies showed that use of production requirements can increase the efficiency of 3P, however, the support for production engineers to capture and share production requirements is scarce. A method to support production engineers in identifying, defining, structuring and sharing production requirements and collaborating with design engineers is presented. The method has three major parts - focus areas and requirement categories, a worksheet for production requirements capturing and prioritization, and a workflow for using the worksheet. The method was developed in collaboration with practitioners and contributes to the existing knowledge by providing production engineers with a structured way of working with production requirements. Evaluation of the method in the case company showed its usability when developing product variants and that additional work is needed to support the development of new product families and assembly lines.

A Novel Approach to Systematic Development of Social Robot Product Families

A Novel Approach to Systematic Development of Social Robot Product Families

Methodical Support for the New Development of Cyber-Physical Product Families

AbstractThe new development of cyber-physical product families currently lacks a methodically supported modularisation approach. This paper provides an approach for module-based mechatronic development, which provides design for future product variety. The state of the art in terms of mechatronic system design and modular product architecture design is presented. A modified V-model is then shown that integrates initial product architecture design and life phase modularisation. The method is applied and evaluated for the development of product family generations of robot units in a teaching course.

Productization as a link to combining product portfolio management and product family development

In R&D many disciplines focus on different aspects of managing the product life cycle. Generally, the focus can be divided into technical aspects and business aspects. Combining these two views, and research areas can be beneficial in the context of productization. Productization links to the concept of product structure and relates to modelling of the offering according to a consistent product structure, commercially and technically. The goal of this research is to identify how a business-specific product structure can be formed and should be managed to maximize the value of the offering. This study uses a literature review for defining the current state of product portfolio management (PPM) and product family development (PFD) concepts with linkages to productization. As a result, this study presents similarities and differences between PPM and PFD through the productization lens. A suggestion of combining the best practices of both approaches is demonstrated through an illustrative case study. Also, proposals for future research are presented. The main contribution involves indicating that effective PPM requires a business-specific physical product structure and partitioning logic. The benefits of PPM can only be truly captured through applicable product structure. Therefore, PFD is recommended to be used in designing product portfolio related technical aspects. PPM is applied for management purposes with the support of a defined product structure.

Cross domain modularization tool: Mechanics, electronics, and software

Modularization is a strategy used for handling the demand for external complexity with less internal complexity, which leads to higher profits and more efficient product development processes. However, modularity is often driven in silos, not crossing into the engineering fields of mechanics, electronics, and software. Therefore, we present the MESA (Mechanics, Electronics, and Software Architecture) tool—a tool that can be used to visualize modular product architectures across mechanics, electronics, and software. The tool demonstrates how a change in one domain affects the rest and how well aligned the modularity in the different domains is. The tool has been tested in two case companies that were used for case application and has helped provide information for making key design decisions in the development of new product families.

A Review of The Development of Civil Aircraft Family

The development of product family has become a major trend in industrial product research and development, which can meet the needs of market segments, shorten research and development time, reduce research and development costs, and quickly increase market share. The development of civil aircraft family is one of the important characteristics of modern civil aircraft design, which can bring significant economic benefits for aircraft life cycle. In order to meet the needs of the market and realize cost reduction and efficiency increase, the development of civil aircraft family has become the main direction of the development of modern civil aircraft, which has attracted widespread attention, and the major aircraft manufacturers have formed their own series of civil aircraft. Focusing on the development of civil aircraft family, this paper reviews the development of product family, the design of civil aircraft family and the development status of typical civil aircraft family in the field of civil aircraft. Then the challenges and future research directions of civil aircraft family are summarized and discussed.

Product customization and generative design

Parametric design is essentially a generative design that can be created using a computer and mathematical relationships. In a process-oriented way (instead of changing the shape), we modify the components' parameters that make up the shape, resulting in a new look. Because manipulations' consequences can be seen immediately, the development of product families and new product variants can be implemented quickly. With the help of parametric design, customizing the product and increasing customer satisfaction is more efficient, as several successful projects have already shown in automotive industry, aircraft manufacturing, architecture, jewellery manufacturing, etc.

Challenges in early phase of product family development processes

The early phase of product development is often described as particularly challenging. Especially in the case of innovations, various challenges that can be attributed to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) are said to come into play. Far more often than breakthrough innovation projects, however, product development projects found in industrial practice incorporate incremental innovations on component or module level. This is especially the case for product developments within product families, where often a large part of modules and technical solutions are used in several products simultaneously and over several development cycles. The aim of this paper is to identify specific challenges especially in the context of the early phase of product families, to assign them to the four dimensions of VUCA and to put them in the context of different boundary conditions, such as novelty degree. For this purpose, a two-part approach was chosen: first, empirical studies concerning the early phase of the product (family) development are summarized, second, three explorative and semi-structured interviews were conducted. As a result, it can be concluded that challenges related to complexity, such as difficult decision-making in balancing internal and external goals or due to interdisciplinary cooperation and coordination between the partners involved, ambiguity, such as due to different interpretations of the same information, as well as uncertainty, such as not knowing about future customer requests, are of particular importance. Challenges related to volatility, on the other hand, were mentioned only sporadically. Furthermore, closeness to the customer, for example, seems to be a boundary condition that favours or prevents the occurrence of certain challenges in the early phase of product family development.

Digital twins of product families in aviation based on an MBSE-assisted approach

In this paper an approach to combine the basic concept of Digital Twins with research in product family development applied to civil aviation is presented. Concomitant benefits but also challenges regarding the management of information are introduced as well as the possibility to solve them by using the tools and methods of Model-Based Systems Engineering. As this conjoins three different topics, the basics of each of them in reference to the approach is introduced before they are subsequently combined. In the process, respective past and future research is presented as well.

Automating system test case classification and prioritization for use case-driven testing in product lines

Product Line Engineering (PLE) is a crucial practice in many software development environments where software systems are complex and developed for multiple customers with varying needs. At the same time, many development processes are use case-driven and this strongly influences their requirements engineering and system testing practices. In this paper, we propose, apply, and assess an automated system test case classification and prioritization approach specifically targeting system testing in the context of use case-driven development of product families. Our approach provides: (i) automated support to classify, for a new product in a product family, relevant and valid system test cases associated with previous products, and (ii) automated prioritization of system test cases using multiple risk factors such as fault-proneness of requirements and requirements volatility in a product family. Our evaluation was performed in the context of an industrial product family in the automotive domain. Results provide empirical evidence that we propose a practical and beneficial way to classify and prioritize system test cases for industrial product lines.

INCONSISTENCY MANAGEMENT FOR PRODUCT FAMILIES WITH MANY VARIANTS THROUGH A MODEL-BASED APPROACH IN MODULAR LIGHTWEIGHT DESIGN

AbstractIn methodical product development, numerous data are used and linked with each other, especially variant-related data. This paper presents a model-based solution for avoiding inconsistencies in the development of product families with many variants and extends it to modular lightweight design. In addition, the inconsistencies in methodical product development were classified and solution approaches were shown. Thus, inconsistencies can be avoided with the presented elaborated data model for an integrated product and process model based on the presented procedure.

REVERSE-ARCHITECTING APPROACH FOR SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE MODELS

AbstractFor an efficient product family development an abstraction of concrete product variants is necessary in order to recognize and systematically describe characteristic properties of a variant. System architecture models represent a possibility for the systematic description of the product variety. The structure of architecture models for existing product families resembles a reverse engineering process, in which products have to be analyzed on their structures. This paper describes a reverse engineering approach for building up system architecture models as basis for developing product families.

Harmonizing cross-departmental Perspectives on Modular Product Families

Abstract In order to maintain their competitiveness and to respond effectively to different customer needs, manufacturing companies offer a wide range of product variants. This increasing product variety leads to an increase in variety-induced complexity and thus to rising costs in all departments. The development of modular product families is a proven strategy to handle the large external variety with a relatively small internal variety. Modularization requires not only technical-functional, but also organizational, process-related and strategic aspects from all involved departments in order to create an optimal product architecture. The method of the Life Phases Modularization offers this possibility as it integrates all perspectives of the different departments and tries to harmonize the partially contradictory aspects using the Module Process Chart (MPC). The resulting harmonized module process forms the global optimum for exploiting potentials of modular product families within the entire company. The method was developed almost a decade ago and has been applied and refined over time in several industrial cases. This paper presents the method on the basis of two industrial examples and shows deficits and improvements in a consolidated manner.

Progressive modelling of feature-centred product family development

Modelling a product family is critical for understanding the evolution of key design and manufacturing features associated with products in the product through-life development. This research aims to establish a model for the holistic description of the evolution process of a product family to support rapid development of new products with hybrid innovations. In this study, a new broader definition of the product family is proposed for products on cross-platforms but in the same class or category, called feature-centred product family. A progressive modelling of feature-centred product family is developed for progressively addressing the evolution of products and achieving the dynamic expression of a product family. A prototype system has been developed and tested with an industrial case study, which indicates that the proposed new feature-centred product family concept and progressive modelling method are not only supportive to realise the common and adaptive analysis of key design features but also helpful to improve the design and production efficiency of innovative products with knowledge and feature reuse.

Developing agile platform assets – exploring ways to reach beyond modularisation at five product development companies

The use of a product platform has been acknowledged as a strategic enabler for product family development and mass customisation. However, many companies struggle with adopting the common platform approach building upon pre-defined modules and components as it constrains the fulfilment of unique customer requirements and a rapid introduction of new technologies. These are the conditions under which manufacturing companies acting as suppliers operates, where unique solutions are delivered to different business customers, market segments or brands. This work reports the results from case studies of platform development conducted in collaboration with five product developing and manufacturing companies. The focus of this paper is on their initial states; including how they work with their product concept before a development project is started, the character of requirements and the adoption of product platforms. The main contribution of this work is a presentation of criteria on, and identification of, new platform elements termed design assets. These are introduced as a means to enable diverse types of resources to be reused in a company and a pragmatic way to bridge the gap between the physical products and the knowledge, tools and methods needed to realise these.

Co-evolution of product family configuration and supplier selection: a game-theoretic bilevel optimisation approach

ABSTRACTJoint decision making of configuration design and supplier selection has been well recognised for successful development of modular product families. However, the prevailing practice for integrating supplier selection into product family design is limited to only one family generation and neglects the changes in customer demands and technological progress over time, which calls for a co-evolution design across product generations from a systematic perspective, instead of separating optima.In this paper, the co-evolution of configuration design and supplier selection for a product family is regarded as a distributed collaborative decision making, for which a Stackelberg game theoretic decision framework is proposed to model the interactions between product family planning in the current generation and product family re-planning in the next generation. Consistent with the Stackelberg game, a nonlinear bilevel optimisation model with a common deviation objective function, compromising an upper-level planning optimisation and a lower-level re-planning optimisation, is formulated. A corresponding nested bilevel genetic algorithm is developed to solve the optimisation model. A case study of mobile phone product family co-evolution with supplier selection is reported to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed collaborative game theoretic approach.

Coordinated optimization of low-carbon product family and its manufacturing process design by a bilevel game-theoretic model

Abstract While increasing environmental issues arising from product development and manufacturing activities have attracted much attention from both academia and industry alike, few researches have addressed joint optimization of product family architecting (PFA) and its manufacturing process configuration (MPC) considering environmental concerns. Moreover, the hierarchical characteristics underlying these two optimization problems and complex interactions among PFA, MPC, and environmental concerns are failed to be revealed and addressed in the previous research. In this paper, a bilevel game-theoretic model for coordinating low-carbon PFA (L-CPFA) and low-carbon MPC (L-CMPC) is proposed. The L-CPFA decision by a designer (game-leader) is represented as an upper-level optimization problem for optimal configuration of module instances and architecture of compound modules and product variants from the perspectives of economic and environmental performances. The L-CMPC decision by a manufacturer (game-follower) is modeled as a lower-level optimization problem in order to determine the optimal low-carbon realization process planning of each primitive module, each compound module, and the assembly and transportation mode of each product variant according to the upper-level decision. A nonlinear, 0–1 integer bilevel programming model is developed, and then solved by a nested bilevel genetic algorithm (NBGA). A case study of a microwave oven product family is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed model and algorithm. The results indicate that the carbon emissions have apparently impact on the optimal PFA and MPC decisions, and integrating low-carbon awareness into product family development activities is beneficial and advisable for enterprises to increase customer-perceived utilities and competitive advantages. Our proposed model can handle well the conflict and coordination between L-CPFA and L-CMPC, and balance well enterprise's benefits with environmental impacts triggered by development activities.

Product family formation based on complexity for assembly systems

System complexity in development of products for the automated assembly systems causes significant issues, if left unaddressed. Products with similar level of complexity tend to cause similar issues in production. Development of product families based on complexity is an important tool to avoid such issues. This paper presents a novel approach to classify the products based on complexity level for assembly systems. Assembly aspects are then used, which define the complexity levels of individual parts. The individual part complexity level is further merged with the assembly sequence in the form of binary rooted trees. Hierarchical clustering is also employed to find the similarity coefficients of different products. These products are finally segregated based on the generated coefficients. Four products are used as a part of thorough case study to show the working principle of the proposed approach along with the results and associated discussion.

Efficient Design Module Capture and Representation for Product Family Reuse

New business models and more integrated product development processes require designers to make use of knowledge more efficiently. Capture and reuse are means of coping, but support, techniques, and mechanisms have yet to be sufficiently addressed. This paper consequently explores how computer-aided technologies (CAx) and a computer-aided design (CAD) model-oriented approach can be used to improve the efficiency of design module capture and representation for product family reuse. The first contribution of this paper is the investigation performed at a Swedish manufacturing company and a set of identified challenges related to design capture and representation for reuse in product family development. The second contribution is a demonstrated and evaluated set of systems and tools, which exemplifies how these challenges can be approached. Efficient design capture is achieved by a combination of automated and simplified design capture, derived from the design implementation (CAD model definition) to the extent possible. Different design representations can then be accessed by the designer using the CAD-internal tool interface. A web application is an example of more general-purpose representation to tailor design content, all of which is managed by a product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Design capture is based on a modular view block definition, stored in formal information models, management by a PLM system, for consistent and reliable design content. It was, however, introduced to support the rich and expressive forms of capture and representation required to facilitate understanding, use, and reuse of varied and increasingly complex designs. A key element in being able to describe a complex design and its implementation has been capture and representation of a set of design states. The solution has been demonstrated to effectively be able to capture and represent significant portions of a step-by-step design training material and the implementation of complex design module through a set of design decisions taken. The validity and relevance of the proposed solution is strengthened by the level of acceptance and perceived value from experienced users, together with the fact that the company is implementing parts of it today.