Abstract.
Developing a robust, product platform architecture brings an important competitive advantage to a company. The major benefits are reduced design effort and time-to-market for future generations of the product. This paper describes a step-by-step method that aids companies in developing such product platform architectures. Using the concept of specification "flows" within a product development project, the design for variety (DFV) method develops two indices to measure a product's architecture. The first index is the generational variety index (GVI), a measure for the amount of redesign effort required for future designs of the product. The second index is the coupling index (CI), a measure of the coupling among the product components. The design team uses these two indices to develop a decoupled architecture that requires less design effort for follow-on products. This paper describes the DFV method and uses a water cooler example to illustrate the method.
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Martin, M.V., Ishii, K. Design for variety: developing standardized and modularized product platform architectures. Res Eng Design 13, 213–235 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-002-0020-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-002-0020-2