Title: Product family positioning based on customer value

Authors: Yiyang Zhang, Jianxin Jiao

Addresses: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue 50, 639798, Singapore. ' School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue 50, 639798, Singapore

Abstract: To keep a competitive advantage, it is imperative for industries to deliver the |right| product offerings to the target market. The selection of an optimal mix of product variants becomes a critical decision problem facing companies across industries, namely product family positioning. To deal with the dilemmas involved in the product family positioning problem, a maximising customer value model is proposed. A genetic algorithm is applied to solve the combinatorial optimisation problem. A case study of motor product family positioning is reported to validate the feasibility of the proposed methodology.

Keywords: product family positioning; customer value; genetic algorithms; competitive advantage; product development; product mix; product variants; product families; automotive products; product variety.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2005.008006

International Journal of Product Development, 2005 Vol.2 No.4, pp.339 - 352

Published online: 25 Oct 2005 *

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