Modular product architectures offer a solution for the trade-off between offering the market a wide variety of products and improving a company’s internal cost situation. However, individual cost effects that determine the extent to which modularity should be applied to product architecture are widely unknown in industry. In this paper, we develop a conceptual approach to provide suggestions for improving an examined modular product architecture from a cost perspective. Our work makes an important contribution: The conceptual approach accentuates which steps are necessary in order to recommend whether the product architecture’s current degree of modularity should be enhanced or diminished.

Formalized Project Portfolio Management (PPM) models struggle to provide comprehensive solutions to project selection, resource allocation and adaptability to dynamic technology project environments. In this article, we introduce a vision for a novel Modular Project Portfolio Management (MPPM) approach by drawing on well-established engineering methods for designing modular product architectures. We show how systems theory can be used to enable a transfer of methods from the area of engineering design and manufacturing to the area of PPM and how the concept of product modularity could help address challenges of existing PPM approaches. This lays the groundwork for the possible development of MPPM as a new and innovative methodology for managing complex technology and engineering project landscapes.

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