Shape Commonalization to Develop Common Platform for Product Family

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagar Chowdhury ◽  
Zahed Siddique
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Cad Models ◽  
Platform Development ◽  
The Common ◽  
Index Value ◽  
Challenging Situation ◽  
Commonality Index ◽  
Common Platform

Current market place is highly competitive and frequently changing, to survive companies need to quickly respond to the customers’ requirements. This challenging situation demands a robust platform design and development process to produce variety of products in the shortest possible time. The common components for a set of similar products under a family can be grouped into a common platform. Development of product platform requires measuring the similarity among a set of products. This paper presents an approach to measure the similarity among a set of CAD models of products to develop a common product platform. The measured similarity of geometries can allow designers to identify components that have the potential to be included in the common platform. The degree of similarity is determined by extracting the information and developing a suitable commonality index for a set of CAD models. The commonality index values are then used to determine the common platform for a set of assembly products by developing and calculating the Average Assembly Platform index value. The overall approach is followed by two case studies: Cell Phone casing models and Vacuum Cleaner models.

Product Platform Design: A Graph Grammar Approach

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahed Siddique ◽  
David W. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Mass Customization ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Graph Grammar ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Portfolio ◽  
Graph Grammars ◽  
The Core ◽  
Platform Development ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Platform

Abstract The current marketplace can be characterized by the need for variety, faster time to market, and decrease in cost. To survive companies are shifting from a mass production mode to mass customization to provide the necessary variety. One of the key elements of mass customization is the product platform. In this paper we will investigate the use of graph grammars to develop common platforms for a set of similar products and to specify the product portfolio supported by the platform. To facilitate development of common platforms a formal product family architecture representation is presented which separates the core and the options to facilitate the identification of the common platform. Graphs are used to represent the core for function and structure viewpoints, and grammars to specify the relationships among the core and the options. Arguments on suitability of graph grammars in common platform development, are also presented in the paper.

Optimal Kinematics Design of an Industrial Robot Family

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan O¨lvander ◽  
Xiaolong Feng ◽  
Bo Holmgren
Keyword(s):  
Mass Customization ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Industrial Robots ◽  
Mathematical Framework ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Product Families ◽  
The Common ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Common Platform

Product family design is a well recognized method to address the demands of mass customization. A potential drawback of product families is that the performance of individual members are reduced due to the constraints added by the common platform, i.e. parts and components need to be shared by other family members. This paper presents a formal mathematical framework where the product family design problem is stated as an optimization problem and where optimization is used to find an optimal product family. The object of study is kinematics design of a family of industrial robots. The robot is a serial manipulator where different robots share arms from a common platform. The objective is to show the trade-off between the size of the common platform and the kinematics performance of the robot.

Introduction of a Product Family Penalty Function Using Physical Programming

2002 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achille Messac ◽  
Michael P. Martinez ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Penalty Function ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Variety ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Physical Programming ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Scaling Parameters ◽  
The Common ◽  
Selection Of

In an effort to increase customization for today’s highly competitive global markets, many companies are looking to product families to increase product variety and shorten product lead-times while reducing costs. The key to a successful product family is the common product platform around which the product family is derived. Building on our previous work in product family design, we introduce a product family penalty function (PFPF) in this paper to aid in the selection of common and scaling parameters for families of products derived from scalable product platforms. The implementation of the PFPF utilizes the powerful physical programming paradigm to formulate the problem in terms of physically meaningful parameters. To demonstrate the proposed approach, a family of electric motors is developed and compared against previous results. We find that the PFPF enables us to properly balance commonality and performance within the product family through the judicious selection of the common parameters that constitute the product platform and the scaling parameters used to instantiate the product family.

A Variation-Based Methodology for Product Family Design

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raviraj U. Nayak ◽  
Wei Chen ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Small Deviations ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Performance Requirements ◽  
Input Design ◽  
Design Variables ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Common

Abstract In recent years, considerable research has been directed towards the development of methods for designing families of products. In this paper, we present a Variation-Based Platform Design Methodology (VBPDM), which aims to satisfy a range of performance requirements using the smallest variation of the product designs in the family. In the first stage of the VBPDM, the common product platform around which the product family is to be developed is identified. A ranged set of solutions is found, represented by the mean and standard deviation of the input design variables, to meet a range of the different performance requirements for the product family. During this first stage, a compromise Decision Support Problem (DSP) is used to optimize the commonality goal that seeks to minimize the deviation of the input design variables, while satisfying the range of performance requirements. Those design variables that show small deviations are held constant to form the product platform. In the second stage of the VBPDM, each individual product is designed around the common platform such that the functional requirements of the product are best satisfied. As an example, the proposed method is used to develop a family of universal electric motors designed to meet a range of torque requirements. The results are compared against previous work.

Shape Comparison of 3D Models Based on Features and Parameters

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karthik Viswanathan ◽  
Sagar Chowdhury ◽  
Zahed Siddique
Keyword(s):  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Product Family ◽  
3D Models ◽  
3D Cad ◽  
Solid Models ◽  
Cad Models ◽  
3D Solid ◽  
Aided Design ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
Common Platform

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is used extensively during mechanical product design, which involves creating 3D models of components and then assembling them into modules and systems. Methods and tools to compare components and identify a common platform using these 3D CAD models of components would facilitate faster specification of product family architecture. Hence, there is a need to develop means for comparing component geometry, in order to identify the common and distinct features, determine component commonality, and identify a common platform for the set of components. This paper presents an approach to determine geometric commonality between components from their 3D solid models. The approach consists of performing a pair-wise comparison between components. To measure commonality for a pair of components, first all feature-pair’s dimensions and positions are measured, which then combined to give the overall component-pair commonality.

Comprehensive Product Platform Planning (CP3) Using Mixed-Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization and a New Commonality Index

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Souma Chowdhury ◽  
Achille Messac ◽  
Ritesh Khire
Keyword(s):  
Particle Swarm Optimization ◽  
Particle Swarm ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Population Diversity ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Discrete Variables ◽  
Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization ◽  
Swarm Optimization ◽  
Discrete Particle ◽  
Commonality Index

A product family with a common platform paradigm can increase the flexibility and responsiveness of the product-manufacturing process and help take away market share from competitors that develop one product at a time. The recently developed Comprehensive Product Platform Planning (CP3) method allows (i) the formation of sub-families of products, and (ii) the simultaneous identification and quantification of platform/scaling design variables. The CP3 model is founded on a generalized commonality matrix representation of the product-platform-plan. In this paper, a new commonality index is developed and introduced in CP3 to simultaneously account for the degree of inter-product commonalities and for the overlap between groups of products sharing different platform variables. To maximize both the performance of the product family and the new commonality measure, we develop and apply an advanced mixed-discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (MDPSO) algorithm. In the MDPSO algorithm, the discrete variables are updated using a deterministic nearest-feasible-vertex criterion after each iteration of the conventional PSO. Such an approach is expected to avoid the undesirable discrepancy in the rate of evolution of discrete and continuous variables. To prevent a premature stagnation of solutions (likely in conventional PSO), while solving the high dimensional MINLP problem presented by CP3, we introduce a new adaptive diversity-preservation technique. This technique first characterizes the population diversity and then applies a stochastic update of the discrete variables based on the estimated diversity measure. The potential of the new CP3 optimization methodology is illustrated through its application to design a family of universal electric motors. The optimized platform plans provide helpful insights into the importance of accounting for the overlap between different product platforms, when quantifying the effective commonality in the product family.

The Role of Platform Architecture Characteristics in Flexible Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (08) ◽  
pp. 1950061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haluk Yoeruer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Time Delay ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Platform Architecture ◽  
Platform Development

The platform-based product development strategy is well-known as an efficient development methodology for high variety products in many industries. The development of a physical platform prior to the development of platform-based products receives more and more importance in industrial practice and academic research. Through the upstream development of the product platform there can be a significant time delay between the planning of a platform and the development of the final platform-based product. This time delay is even more reinforced by the fact that product platforms have a longer usage time than a single product. During this time, market dynamics can negatively affect the decisions which are made in the upstream product platform development project. Flexible decision-making within platform development projects will be therefore a key challenge to develop a successful product platform in a dynamic market environment. The influence of the different platform architecture characteristics, being one of the most crucial decisions within a platform project, is evaluated in this paper, regarding flexible decision-making. In total, five key characteristics of platform architectures are identified from literature and described. The “degree of module and component reuse” which specifies closed and open platforms, the “degree of modularization versus integration” which specifies the main function structure of the platform, the “degree of scalability” which describes the potential for scaling main functions, the “degree of commonality” which from top-down specifies the common unchanged parts across all product variants within the product family, and “the share of platform modules developed within a platform project”. Based on the case study analysis of well-known and often cited platform development publications, this study shows that a significant number of platform development decisions are affected by the different characteristics of platform architectures, in terms of flexible decision-making. Based on the findings, this paper provides a new perspective to introduce development flexibility in platform projects by using the distinct characteristics of platform architectures which support flexible decision-making.

A Product Platform Development Method Using QFD

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaeil Park ◽  
Dongmin Shin
Keyword(s):  
Quality Function Deployment ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Product Lines ◽  
Development Method ◽  
Major Market ◽  
Technical Requirements ◽  
Platform Development ◽  
Product Platform Development ◽  
Common Components

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was initially developed to aid in designing a quality product by interconnecting customer needs in a market segment with technical requirements. Although it assists in improving product quality, it does not have a function to examine technical requirements across the major market segments serviced by a company’s product lines and to aid in developing product platform concepts. In this paper, we present a product platform development method using QFD that aids in developing platform concepts as well as improving the understanding of product family design. This method includes platform planning and platform concept exploration. Platform planning describes the extent to which a variety of products share common components, and platform concepts then are explored, which are the arrangement of common components. This paper uses an electric razor example to illustrate the proposed method.

Platform Commonization With Discrete Design Spaces: Introduction of the Flow Design Space

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. Corbett ◽  
David W. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Design Space ◽  
Product Family ◽  
Configuration Design ◽  
Function Form ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Core Function ◽  
Design Requirements ◽  
The Common ◽  
Space Approach ◽  
Common Platform

Many companies have adopted the usage of common platforms to support the development of product families. The problem addressed in this paper deals with the development of a common platform for an existing set of products that may or may not already form a product family. The common platform embodies the core function, form, and technology base shared across the product family. In this work, we focus on configuration aspects of the platform commonization problem to determine which components are in the platform and the relationships among these components. Configuration design spaces are discrete and combinatorial in nature, but not necessarily purely combinatorial, as certain combinations represent infeasible designs. By carefully forming discrete design spaces and applying constraints to them, feasible design regions can be found and their sizes predicted. The purpose of this paper is to outline our approach to defining configuration design spaces for engineering design, with an emphasis on the mathematics of the spaces and their combinations into larger spaces that more completely capture design requirements. A new design space that models flows among components is introduced. Other design spaces that model physical connectivity, functionality, and assembly considerations are summarized. An example of a family of rechargeable flashlights illustrates the application of the discrete design space approach to develop a common platform.

Product Family and Product Platform Benchmarking With Commonality and Variety Indices

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Lead Times ◽  
Product Platform ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Common Platform

As companies are pressured to reduce costs and lead-times while increasing variety, the need to design products based on common platform “elements” is growing. Product family design has become an effective strategy to meet this challenge, but companies still struggle with assessing how “good” their product family is. Companies routinely benchmark their individual products, but they struggle with how to benchmark their platforms and product families against their competitors. A novel approach for product family benchmarking is introduced in this paper integrating commonality and variety indices to compare competing product families and their platform “elements”. An example involving two families of men’s razors is presented to illustrate the approach. Limitations of the approach and future work are also discussed.

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