Deciding on the total number of product architectures

Many industries have to deliver mass customised products rather than mass produced products in today's markets, and companies often aim to accommodate this by introducing modular product architectures. However, today's methods do not explicitly support the decision on how many architectures a company's entire product programme should be based on. Therefore, this article presents a method to help companies decide on the total number of product architectures they require. The method goes through four stages: market segmentation, mapping new generation with an existing architecture strategy, architecture changes and the new architecture strategy. Essentially, the method is a way of modelling and challenging the total number of architectures in a company. The method was tested on a case company and helped it to reduce its number of architectures from 19 to 7 while at the same time introducing new product variants. Cost reductions due to a higher level of commonality were achieved and the new product architectures were prepared for future innovations.