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Abstract
This PhD thesis has the title Product Platform Modelling. The thesis is about product platforms and visual
product platform modelling.
Product platforms have gained an increasing attention in industry and academia in the past decade. The
reasons are many, yet the increasing globalisation and the change in the global economy seem to be major
factors. Manufacturing companies have experienced an intensifying competition and many companies
face increasing demands for reductions in costs and lead times in development and production. At the
same time many customers have raised their demands for customisation of products. In many companies
these changes in the business environment have created a controversy between the need for a wide variety
of products offered to the marketplace and a desire to reduce variation within the company in order to
increase efficiency.
Many companies use the concept of product platforms to overcome this challenge of balancing the
external and internal performance demands. Product platforms are found in many different instantiations
in various industries and companies, and the concepts and challenges are likewise diverse.
This PhD thesis documents a research project with two main purposes; First, various phenomena related
to product platforms are investigated and secondly it is investigated how some of these phenomena can be
visually modelled in order to support decision making in industrial platform projects.
The investigation of platform phenomena is based on the notion that reuse and encapsulation of platform
elements are fundamental characteristics of a product platform. Reuse covers the desire to reuse and share
certain assets across a family of products and/or across generations of products. Product design solutions
and principles are often regarded as important assets in a product platform, yet activities, working
patterns, processes and knowledge can also be reused in a platform approach. Encapsulation is seen as a
process in which the different elements of a platform are grouped into well defined and self-contained
units which are decoupled from each other. These groups can be varied and combined to form different
product variants without increasing the internal variety in the company. Based on the Theory of
Domains, the concept of encapsulation in the organ domain is introduced, and organs are formulated as
platform elements. Included in this introduction is a discussion of the dispositional effects of organ and
wirk element encapsulation. Unlike most present perceptions of platforms and modularity, the concept of
organ encapsulation makes it possible to describe the system characteristics of a product platform in
which reuse and encapsulation effects are obtained without necessarily introducing standardised physical
interfaces between the varying elements.
By means of three industrial cases, in the companies Danfoss, Grundfos and Aker Solutions, it is discussed
and exemplified how some of the phenomena and effects related to reuse and encapsulation can be
visually modelled during product platform projects. A fundamental hypothesis in this project is that
decision makers and important stakeholders have to be able to see the platform in order to manage it.
Consequently, the thesis also investigates how visual models of important phenomena can support
decision makers during a product platform project. The reaction from stakeholders in the case companies
indicates that the decision base is improved by means of visual models. Another finding is that the
sometimes rather theoretical and intangible phenomena can be instantiated in models and thereby made
tangible and visual for decision makers and designers in the organisation.
Original language | English |
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Place of Publication | Kgs. Lyngby |
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Publisher | DTU Management |
Number of pages | 325 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-87-90855-48-2 |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2010 |
Series | PhD thesis |
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Number | 13.2010 |
Keywords
- Architecture
- Platform
- PD methods
- Design
- Lifecycle
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Dive into the research topics of 'Product Platform Modeling: Contributions to the discipline of visual product platform modelling'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Referencearkitektur for produktplatforme og produktionsprocesser
Pedersen, R. (PhD Student), Mortensen, N. H. (Main Supervisor), McAloone, T. C. (Supervisor), Hildre, H. P. (Examiner), Johannesson, H. L. (Examiner) & Hansen, P. K. (Examiner)
01/09/2004 → 09/06/2010
Project: PhD