Title: Commonality opportunity search in industrial product portfolios

Authors: Jakub Kwapisz; Virginia Infante; Bruce G. Cameron

Addresses: MIT Portugal, Instituto Superior Tecnico, University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal ' LAETA, IDMEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal ' System Architecture Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Abstract: Development of product platforms, modules and common components is recognised in both industry and academia as a means of meeting changing customer needs within reasonable cost and time parameters. Identifying candidate parts to make common across different product portfolios is a complex task. This paper investigates current issues of product platform and modularity development, and focuses on searching for commonality opportunities. The concept of a commonality opportunity search algorithm (COSA) is introduced as a methodology to quickly identify cost efficient commonality opportunities. COSA streamlines the process of searching thousands of parts in company databases to determine common bases and individual parts differentiation based on available data. The analysed data was collected from numerous departments, which allows for nominating commonality opportunities based on global company strategy rather than on the needs of any individual department. An industrial example is presented to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed methodology.

Keywords: commonality; product platform; modularity; product portfolio; component sharing; part reuse; search algorithm; product development; variety management; duplicate detection; industrial database analysis; management of knowledge; component innovation; design strategy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2019.105318

International Journal of Technology Management, 2019 Vol.81 No.3/4, pp.258 - 273

Accepted: 06 Jul 2019
Published online: 24 Feb 2020 *

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