Research On Correlation Effect Of Product Family Architecture On Competitive Advantage Of Product Family

As the front-end of process of product family development, product familyarchitecture is a closely related to other in the process. Competitive advantage ofproduct family describes how product family performs on the market. Product familyarchitecture attach great importance both successful development of product familyand creating and maintaining competitive advantage of product family.Firstly, based on existing research and the process of product familydevelopment, hierarchical architecture of product family is proposed in this paper.Product family architecture consists of three vertical levels: platform, product line andcustomized product. Platform provides basic technic and module for product familydevelopment. Product line is responsible for product family design and positioning.The general structure of product family is constructed in this level. Customizedproduct architecture is a customized subset of general structure, acting as theframework of product variant design.Secondly, the influential factors related to product family architecture areanalyzed, both internally and externally. These factors exert effect on product familyarchitecture, as well as competitive advantage of product family, directly.Thirdly, competitive advantage of product family is divided into two parts: scaleadvantage and customization advantage. They originate from mass customization ofproduct family. The result reveals that each hierarchy of product family has an effecton competitive advantage of product family. Product family architecture and itsinfluential factors have correlation effect on competitive advantage of product family.The effect paths are revealed in this paper.What’s more, an empirical study is conducted at the last of this paper. Thearchitecture of iPhone family is described. The competitive advantage of iPhonefamily and its origin are analyzed.