International Journal of Production Research Vol. 51, No. 2, 15 January 2013, 614–625 A hybrid model of component sharing and platform modularity for optimal product family design Tarang Agrawal a , Anuj Sao a , Kiran Jude Fernandes b , Manoj Kumar Tiwari a * and Duck Young Kim c a Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (West Bengal), India; b The York Management School, University of York, York, United Kingdom; c School of Design & Human Engineering (DHE), Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, South Korea (Received 5 January 2011; final version received 30 January 2012) Today’s industry faces new challenges such as diverse customer demands, shorter product development cycles and cost pressure, which compel manufacturing firms to change their production paradigm from one-size- fits-all mass production toward mass customisation. Over the past decades, modular design has received great attention as a key enabler for mass customisation, and component sharing and platform modularity have been quite popular strategies for modular design. While modular design approaches and their strategies offer a number of advantages such as late product differentiation and changeability, there are unfortunately negative aspects, for example, sales loss due to reduced performance compared to integral design approaches, which have received little attention. Therefore, we propose a hybrid model of the two strategies in order to develop the most profitable product family. A detailed numerical analysis provides empirical support for the feasibility and effectiveness of the hybrid model. Keywords: modular design; platform; component sharing 1. Introduction Today’s industry faces new challenges such as diverse customer demands, shorter product development cycles and cost pressure, which compel manufacturing firms to change their production paradigm from one-size-fits-all mass production toward mass customisation. In order to meet these challenges, firms should restructure their product development processes in a more flexible manner. Many studies have proposed modular design approaches to make products at a low cost but with variety (Ulrich 1995). Since several modules (physical subsystems of a modular architecture product) are arranged to perform required functions by appropriate interfaces, (i) it is easy to change the design simply by replacing only bad or old modules for retrofit, (ii) the product development cycle can be shortened due to the fact that individual modules can be developed independently, and furthermore (iii) late product differentiation is possible, which offers a lot of benefits such as faster reaction to customer requirements and lower inventory costs. Generally, it is difficult to expect the same benefits from integral architecture products, in which required functions are implemented by only one or a few modules such that products usually have peculiar shapes and features. Component sharing and platform modularity are quite popular strategies for modular design (Roberton and Ulrich 1998, Oshri and Newell 2005). Platforms basically are intellectual and material assets shared across a family of products (Robertson and Ulrich 1998). According to Meyer and Lehnerd (1997), a platform is a set of subsystems and interfaces developed to form a common structure from which a stream of derivative products can be efficiently developed and produced. Accordingly, a platform is the same basic structure of a product family, and other components are then assembled to it to develop individual products. Some of these components can further be shared. This is termed as component sharing. Moreover, a platform is shared across the whole product family whereas components can be shared between a subset of this family and not every product. A platform, once designed, can be deployed throughout the product family and hence significantly reduces the fixed costs of developing product variants. Another benefit of platform-based product development is its greater degree of reuse. It inspires the firms to put more effort into their design and development resulting in better architecture, tighter *Corresponding author. Email: mkt09@hotmail.com ISSN 0020–7543 print/ISSN 1366–588X online ß 2013 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2012.663106 http://www.tandfonline.com Downloaded by [Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)] at 07:06 14 May 2013