Product Platform: Trends and Opportunities

Abstract

Increasing market competitiveness forced industries to seek ways to reduce production costs and increase profitability. Companies operating in different markets face different customer expectations. Thus, it is necessary to develop products that meet the most varied market requirements, without demanding the high investment costs that product customization demands. The development of product platforms has helped companies to lower the cost of mass customization. The main benefit of using platforms is the reduction of investment in customized product development. A platform allows creating specific product families for each market application. In view of this context, a bibliographical review was performed with the objective of finding the state of art for the theme and mapping the research opportunities. For this activity, the research tool ProKnow-C (Knowledge Development Process – Constructivist) was considered. From a quantitative analysis, the most relevant papers were identified, based on authors, periodicals, the relevance of articles and keywords. Then, the systemic analysis of articles related to the theme evidences the frontiers of knowledge. The main objectives, methodologies, and opportunities for future research were mapped from 33 articles selected from the database. In the end, 3 gaps were identified for future work.

Automated joining element design for high product variety in the manufacturing industry

“…Both modularization and commonalization opt for reuse and flexibility, which may conflict with the integrative and static production-oriented design of DFA approaches [220]. This is backed up by the trends and opportunities of platform design identified by Cerqueira et al [226]. They argued that the consideration of joining elements is lacking and advocated for the creation assembly modules.…”

“…Schuh et al [225] argued that there are three generic objectives of modular platforms: reducing the time to market, reducing the costs, and managing the customer demand for variety. Cerqueira et al [226] analyzed the trends and opportunities of product platforms and identified three main problems, which are described as follows:…”

“…• Configuration problems with product platforms risk additional costs and worsen maintainability. Additionally, the authors argued for increasing effort in the allocation and arrangement of assembly modules [226] and avoid usage of different modules with the same function [82].…”

“…• Inefficient product platform development requires a streamlined information flow between all stakeholders to harvest the benefits of mass customization [226].…”

“…• Manufacturing and assembly issues for platform-based products require production lines to optimize the use of platforms and be more flexible and adaptable [226].…”