Architectures for product families

The advent of the buyers’ market has imposed a necessity on manufacturing companies to suit individual customer requirements. Companies have answered this need by offering a large variety from which customers can choose their ideal products. Preferably, these products have many common modules to reduce the efforts in development and increase the economy of scale in manufacturing. Still, specific modules must be developed to create the necessary differentiation of products for the individual customers and market segments. The proportion of common and specific modules must be chosen such that profits are maximised. Modularity corresponds to the cost / variety trade-off.