Platform design for customizable products as a problem of access in a geometric space

A product platform is a set of common components, modules or parts from which a stream of derivative products can be created. Product platform design is typically performed as redesign and consolidation of existing products to create more competitive product families by reducing part variety and standardizing components. The main disadvantage of such an approach is that the benefits of product platform design are achieved only after a number of parts have been designed and manufactured, with all the associated expenditure. A number of approaches, referred to as ‘top-down approaches’, have been proposed recently to design the platforms since the original design of the product families. However, current top-down approaches have two major limitations: (1) they do not enable multiple levels of commonality for different components and features, and (2) they have been applied to products that are variegated in one specification, whereas products are typically variegated in multiple specifications. This paper describes a rigorous top-down approach for synthesizing product platforms that facilitates the realization of a stream of customized product variants, and which accommodates naturally multiple levels of commonality and multiple customizable specifications. The proposed approach is based on the formulation of the platform design as a problem of access in a geometric space. The proposed approach is illustrated with a case example, namely, the design of a product platform for a line of customizable pressure vessels.