Design for variety: A methodology for developing product platform architectures

A major competitive advantage for any company is the ability to bring products to market faster. An effective method for gaining this advantage is to develop product platform architectures. While companies understand the strategic reasons for developing such platforms, the process to actually design one is not always clear. This dissertation develops a methodology to assist companies in creating these product platform architectures. The process is referred to as the Design for Variety (DFV) method. The goal of the method is to develop an architecture that requires a minimal amount of redesign effort to accommodate future changes.; The DFV method embodies a framework for estimating two types of drivers causing product redesign: external and internal. External drivers are those created by shifting customer needs, industry standards, government regulation, etc. The impact of these changes on the product's components is captured in the Generational Variety Index (GVI). Internal drivers are created by the propagation of change from one component to other components. This coupling between components is quantified with the Coupling Index (CI). Using these indices, the DFV method prescribes detailed steps and heuristics for developing a product architecture less sensitive to future changes, thus reducing redesign cost and effort.; This work has been applied to four different products and is currently being introduced on projects at a Japanese electronics firm. The dissertation demonstrates the method in detail on two products: an inkjet printer and a thermoelectric water cooler. It also contains a description of uses for the GVI and CI in other areas of design research: including the management of current product variety and the optimization of design tasks.