Product life cycle cost approach for modular lightweight design

Today, many companies are facing a continually growing global competition, increasing individual requirements and a demand for shorter development times. In order to deal with these challenges, they respond with an increasing number of product variants [1], which are managed through variants management methods like modularization. Manufacturers of mobility solutions are also facing higher demands regarding environmental protection [2] and sustainability [3]. Therefore, energy consumption plays a key role in current considerations of mobility solutions and the whole life cycle of a product is considered for controlling and cost calculation [4]. Lightweight design plays a major role for achieving objectives regarding a reduced energy consumption and fulfilling a high functionality of mobility solutions. Modular lightweight design combines the advantages of modularization and lightweight design to enable a modular product with the lowest possible weight [5]. The combination of both methods enables the usage of a cost-efficient lightweight design approach. The presented work will give an overview over the economic aspects and discusses how to utilize the combination of both aspects in a profitable way. The emphasis lies on enabling a cost-efficient design to exploit the potentials of modular lightweight design. The estimation of the profitability is especially important for development decisions in an early phase of product development. It also serves to justify the implementation efforts of an elaborate modular lightweight design approach. Subject of this paper is the development of a model in order to estimate the life cycle costs of modular lightweight products in an early product development stage. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.