Study on how to select appropriate design methods for product platform and family design

As the need for product platform and product family has increased over the last 20 years, research within the area has led to the development of various methods that aim at evaluating a candidate of design. Although their differences are considered a strong point of the theoretical field, the large variety can end up complicating the selection process, which will result in choosing less optimal methods for a specific design case. This paper surveys prior works of design methods for product platform and product family, and proposes Design Method Selection Matrix (DMSM) that can help designers choose appropriate design methods. The underlying basis for the proposed DMSM is to determine methods appropriateness based on the availability of information, which is defined by the situation in which the product development project takes place, as well as the importance of information, which is determined by the goal of the project. The output of DMSM is a score for each of the identified methods that represent the appropriateness of the given method, based on the situation and goal(s) chosen by the designer. Suggestions are based on parameters that can easily be determined by designers without extensive experience within platform based product design. The case study demonstrates the effectiveness of DMSM. © 2013 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.