Why to design modular products?

This paper is based on the development project of productivity by applying principles of product modularity and design reuse. The focus is on companies operating in manufacturing industry and specializing in large investment project deliveries. Analyzing the business impact of modularity is one method and tool used in modularization projects. The analysis is made to ensure that the investment in the development of modular products and the supporting way to operate is justified and supports the company's strategic business objectives. Preliminary business impact analyzes are usually carried out before the actual technical modularization project starts to justify starting the project. Analyzes are made also during the modularization project at different stages, for example to compare alternative concepts or module partitioning types. To support the business impact analysis of modularization, several possible benefits and value creation mechanisms have been identified in previous publications. These mechanisms can be linked to many stages of the product life cycle. This paper first reviews the main mechanisms of modularization through a literature review. In addition to this, based on an ongoing modularization project in a case study with investment product deliveries, we present as new information the latest findings on different potential benefits of modularization to reinforce the previous literature.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Synthesis of Manufacturing Systems Using Co-Platforming

Modern manufacturing environment is characterized by frequent changes within product design in order to satisfy evolving customer requirements. Various strategies are implemented in order to efficiently manage the consequences arising from the product design changes starting from design of the product, planning, manufacturing…etc. This dissertation focuses mainly on the manufacturing phase in which a new concept in manufacturing system synthesis is proposed. A new concept in manufacturing system synthesis has been introduced and coined as “Co-platforming”. Co-platforming is the synthesis of manufacturing systems through mapping product platform features and components to platform machines on one side, and non-platform product features and components to non-platform machines on the other side, in order to reduce the manufacturing system investment cost and prolong the manufacturing system useful life as product variants evolve and change. Tools and methods are developed to synthesize the manufacturing system based on Co-platforming within functional and physical levels. At the functional level, the group of platform and non-platform machines and the number of each machine type are determined. A new matrix based mapping model is proposed to determine the platform and non-platform machines candidates. A ranking coefficient is formulated which ranks the platform machines according to their machining capabilities in order to assist manufacturing firms in decision making concerning which type of platform machine to choose. Furthermore, a new mathematical programming optimization model is proposed in order to provide the optimum selection of machine types among machine candidates and their numbers. Moreover, a new mathematical programming model is proposed which synthesizes manufacturing systems taking into consideration machine level and system level changes based on co-platforming. At the physical level, the manufacturing system configuration is determined which is concerned with determining the number of stages, types of machines in each stage and the number of machines in each stage. A new mathematical programming optimization model is proposed which determines, in addition to the type and number of each machine, the optimal manufacturing system configuration based on co-platforming. The Co-platforming methodology is being applied in two case studies from automotive industry. The first case study is concerned with machining of automotive cylinder blocks taken from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the second case study is concerned with the assembly of automotive cylinder heads taken from ABB flexible automation. The results obtained from the co-platforming methodology indicate that cost reduction can be achieved when synthesizing the manufacturing system based on co-platforming

Modularity Analysis and Commonality Optimization for the Top-down Platform-Based Product Family Design

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH