Architecture of Product Family: Fundamentals and Methodology

The rationale of developing product families with respect to satisfying diverse customer needs with reasonable costs, i.e., mass customization, has been well recognized in both industry and academia. Earlier research often highlights isolated and successful empirical studies with limited attempt to explore the theoretical foundations surrounding this economically important class of engineering design problem. This paper investigates the fundamental issues underlying product family development. The concept of Architecture of Product Family (APF) is introduced as a conceptual structure and overall logical organization of generating a family of products. APF constructs, including common bases, differentiation enablers, and configuration mechanisms, are discussed from both sales and engineering perspectives. Also discussed are variety generation methods with regard to producing custom products based on the modular product architecture and configure-to-order product development. To support APF-based product family design, a Generic Product Structure (GPS) is proposed as the platform for tailoring products to individual customer needs and generating product variants. A case study of an industrial example is also presented to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed methodology.