What exactly is Product Modularity? The answer depends on who you ask

'Product modularity' has recently experienced a significant increase in interest in the academic literature. While the concept of product modularity is used across a wide range of academic research areas, substantial variations exist in the ways in which the concept is described and interpreted. In this paper, I develop a framework to represent the similarities and differences that appear across these variations of the concept of product modularity. Next, through an extensive literature search I construct a set of 85 references representing the use of product modularity in the engineering and management literature over the past 30 years (1975–2006). With help of the framework I then analyze the use and interpretation of product modularity in every reference in the set. The analysis demonstrates that the product modularity concepts taken together really encompass a bundle of product characteristics rather than a single condition, and individual research areas exhibit certain preferences in which they define and operationalize product modularity. I conclude with some recommendations for future research. Overall, this paper strives to provide a vocabulary to improve cross-disciplinary understanding of product modularity

Learning Emergent Strategies Through Design Thinking

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106805/1/drev10271.pd

Modularity and Commonality Research: Past Developments and Future Opportunities

Research on modularity and commonality has grown substantially over the past 15 years. Searching 36 journals over more than the past 35 years, I identify over 160 references in the engineering and management literature that focus on modularity or commonality in the product and process development context. Each of the references is analyzed along the dimensions subject, effect, and research method. The subjects of these studies have been products, processes, organizations, and even innovations, although the set of references shows a strong preference towards products. Similarly, a broad range of effects has been studied, albeit with the topic cost dominating all other effects. A variety of research methods has been applied to the study of modularity and commonality but the distribution of research methods differs substantially for modularity and commonality research. Despite the wealth of existing research, there are still significant opportunities for future research. In particular, studies that incorporate modularity and commonality’s multiple effects on various players along the supply chain, that combine multiple research methods, and that follow systems over time appear very promising

The Power of Integrality: Linkages between Product Architecture, Innovation, and Industry Structure

A substantial literature stream suggests that many products are becoming more modular over time, and that this development is often associated with a change in industry structure towards higher degrees of specialization. These developments can have strong implications for an industry’s competition as the history of the PC industry illustrates. To add to our understanding of the linkages between product architecture, innovation, and industry structure we study an unusual case in which a firm – through decreasing its product modularity – turned its formerly competitive industry into a near-monopoly. Using this case study we explore how existing theories on modularity explain the observed phenomenon, and show that most consider in their analysis technological change in rather long-term dimensions, and tend to focus on efficiencyrelated arguments to explain the resulting forces on competition. Expanding on these theories we add three critical aspects to the theory construct that connects technological change and industry dynamics. First, we suggest re-integating as a new design operator to explain product architecture genesis. Second, we argue that a finer-grained analysis of the product architecture shows the existence of multiple linkages between product architecture and industry structure, and that these different linkages help explain the observed intra-industry heterogeneity across firms. Third, we propose that the firm boundary choice can also be a pre-condition of the origin of architectural innovation, not only an outcome of efficiency considerations

Three Perspectives on Modularity – A Literature Review of a Product Concept for Assembled Hardware Products

In recent years, modularity as a design strategy has received renewed interest. The term modularity, however, is often used to describe phenomena that are similar yet slightly different, for different products, and in different industries and contexts. Therefore, it is unclear whether there is a way to operationalize the concept of modularity across these different uses. This paper reviews the concepts of modularity used in the literature representing different thought worlds (engineering and management) and different occupations (academia and industry)

Product architecture assessment: a tool to link product, process, and supply chain design decisions

Increasingly heterogeneous markets, together with shorter product life cycles, are forcing many companies to simultaneously compete in the three domains of product, process, and supply chain. Dependencies among decisions across these domains make this competitive situation very complex. To address this complexity, three‐dimensional concurrent engineering (3D‐CE) has been suggested ([Fine, C.H., 1998. Clockspeed—Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage. Perseus Books, Reading, MA.]). Applying 3D‐CE requires an operationalization of one of its core elements: the product architecture. In this paper, I develop a multi‐dimensional framework that enables comprehensive product architecture assessments. The framework builds on existing product characteristic concepts such as component commonality, product platforms, and product modularity. The framework’s utility is illustrated with two example products, showing how individual product architecture dimensions link decisions across different domains. This framework can be used to focus advice for product design on product architecture dimensions that are critical for a given operational strategy, to assess advantages and limitations of operational strategies in conjunction with given product architectures, or to develop dynamic capabilities such as planning effective product–operation strategy combinations.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147201/1/joom345.pd

Modularity and Commonality Research: Past Developments and Future Opportunities

Research on modularity and commonality has grown substantially over the past 15 years. Searching 36 journals over more than the past 35 years, I identify over 160 references in the engineering and management literature that focus on modularity or commonality in the product and process development context. Each of the references is analyzed along the dimensions subject, effect, and research method. The subjects of these studies have been products, processes, organizations, and even innovations, although the set of references shows a strong preference towards products. Similarly, a broad range of effects has been studied, albeit with the topic cost dominating all other effects. A variety of research methods has been applied to the study of modularity and commonality but the distribution of research methods differs substantially for modularity and commonality research. Despite the wealth of existing research, there are still significant opportunities for future research. In particular, studies that incorporate modularity and commonality€ٳ multiple effects on various players along the supply chain, that combine multiple research methods, and that follow systems over time appear very promising.Modularity, Multidisciplinary Research, Innovation, Commonality,

Modularity and Commonality Research: Past Developments and Future Opportunities

Research on modularity and commonality has grown substantially over the past 15 years. Searching 36 journals over more than the past 35 years, I identify over 160 references in the engineering and management literature that focus on modularity or commonality in the product and process development context. Each of the references is analyzed along the dimensions subject, effect, and research method. The subjects of these studies have been products, processes, organizations, and even innovations, although the set of references shows a strong preference towards products. Similarly, a broad range of effects has been studied, albeit with the topic cost dominating all other effects. A variety of research methods has been applied to the study of modularity and commonality but the distribution of research methods differs substantially for modularity and commonality research. Despite the wealth of existing research, there are still significant opportunities for future research. In particular, studies that incorporate modularity and commonality's multiple effects on various players along the supply chain, that combine multiple research methods, and that follow systems over time appear very promising.Modularity, Commonality, Innovation, Multidisciplinary Research,

Past Developments and Future Opportunities

Roger Jiao, an