On conceptual development of modular products - Development of supporting tools for the modularisation process

Abstract: The research work detailed in this dissertation relates tothe development of modular products and product families.Historically, product variants have been developed more or lessindependently; but in order to stay competitive in today?sbusiness environment where globalisation and explosion ofvariety are some of the buzzwords, products should be developedas a product family. Developing product families instead ofsingle product variants increases the ability to offercustomised products produced cost efficient.The objective of this research has been to developsupporting tools for conceptual development of modular productsand to increase the understanding of the concept of moduledrivers. The results can be divided into two categories,descriptive and prescriptive results.The descriptive results concern the concept of moduledrivers. These module drivers have been analysed and the resultis a strategic module map where the module drivers are relatedto generic strategies. Furthermore, empirical data regardingthe usage of the module drivers is used to relate the moduledrivers to each other. The result is a grouping of the moduledrivers where similar module drivers are grouped together toform aggregated module drivers. By putting the module driversin a strategic context and by providing an in-depth analysis ofthe consequences of each module driver, as well as developing ahierarchical classification, the understanding of the conceptof module drivers is enhanced.The prescriptive result relates to the usage of clusteranalysis for the generation of modular concepts. Clusteranalysis provides an objectivetool that could be used to grouptechnical solutions into modules based on their module driverassessment. In addition to the module drivers, other factorsmay also be included in the cluster analysis. A softwareprototype has been developed in order to illustrate how clusteranalysis could be used to support concept generation of modularproducts.