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Sony Walkman Follow Up Study - Kota-Et Al - 2000
Sony Walkman Follow Up Study - Kota-Et Al - 2000
Associate Professor,
Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
The University of Michigan,
Commonality in Product Families
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Many companies develop a market strategy built around a family of products. These
e-mail: kota@engin.umich.edu
companies regularly add new product variations to the family in order to meet changing
market needs or to attract a broader customer base. Although the core functionality
Kannan Sethuraman remains essentially unchanged across the products within a family, new functions, feature
Assistant Professor,
combinations and technologies are incorporated into each new product. If allowed to
School of Business Administration
grow unchecked, these component variations, commonly referred to as ‘‘complexity’’, can
The University of Michigan,
result in a loss of productivity or quality. The challenge lies in an effective management
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
of product variations in the design studio and on the manufacturing floor. The key is to
minimize non-value added variations across models within a product family without lim-
Raymond Miller iting customer choices. In this paper we discuss the factors that contribute to product
Research Assistant,
complexity in general, and present an objective measure, called the Product Line Com-
Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
monality Index, to capture the level of component commonality in a product family.
The University of Michigan,
Through our Walkman case study, we present a simple yet powerful method of bench-
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
marking product families1. This method gauges the family’s ability to share parts effec-
e-mail: ramill@engin.umich.edu
tively (modularity) and to reduce the total number of parts (multi-functionality).
关S1050-0472共00兲02704-5兴
Journal of Mechanical Design Copyright © 2000 by ASME DECEMBER 2000, Vol. 122 Õ 403
Methodology Table 1 Features across various models of Sony Walkman
3
In fact, modular principles that tend to decrease non-value added variety 共such as
the reuse of common design modules兲, have become an enabler of reduced product Fig. 1 Function diagram of non-product differentiating func-
development cycles. tions of a walman cassette player
oped to conform to the framework of existing functional and with development, a lack of economies of scale, etc. However, not
physical configurations. all design variations are treated equally by the manufacturer. De-
While this procedure may seem to stifle creativity on the level pending on the production capabilities of the manufacturer, cer-
of component design, creativity is now required to integrate dif- tain types of product variation lead to a greater increase in costs
ferentiating components with common architecture. It is not ben- than the others. Therefore, when we speak of the cost of product
eficial to simply be creative in generating new design concepts. design complexity, we must do so in the context of a manufactur-
New designs must occur with minimum changes to the existing ing facility. For instance, let us consider two different parts be-
configuration. More importantly, if some component or subassem- longing to the same product family, produced on the same pro-
bly does not help in differentiating a product then it requires no duction line but differing in one of the size dimensions. If the
reinventing. A design already exists for this component within the manufacturing method used were stamping, a change-over would
same product family. involve only a simple indexing of the right size tool in real time to
As we have stated above, one of the vital performance mea- accommodate the different part sizes. Whereas, if the parts were
sures of the product development effort is resource productivity. injection molded, the same change in dimension from one part to
This can be defined as the level of resources that are required to
another may require changing dies. This would be a much more
take the project from concept to market. In order to increase re-
time-consuming task when compared to automatically indexing
source productivity, it is imperative that firms conserve their ef-
a stamping tool. This serves to illustrate that it is difficult to
forts by seeking ingenious ways to share designs of non-
differentiating features across models. map variations in product features to increases in manufacturing
When designing a new family, the product development team cost in the absence of information about the capabilities of the
should study each function across the entire product family. The manufacturing facility and the process by which the parts are
goal is to standardize as many components as possible for those manufactured.
functions that are common to the entire family. The design team Some of the major factors which influence the ease or difficulty
should evaluate each function in terms of: with which a certain product design change can be handled in a
given manufacturing facility are:
1 ‘‘How’’ the function is implemented, namely the working
principle, • Material handling system,
2 The number of components required to perform the function, • Level of reconfigurability of tooling
and, • Part size-dunnage and space requirements
3 The different types of components that are used in each de- • Level of automation
sign • Universal grippers
• Worker training and skill levels
• Geometry 共size and shape variations兲 • Equipment maintenance schedules
• Material differences across models • Compatibility of newer operations with existing operations
• Manufacturing processes by which the parts are going to be etc.
made
• Fastening and joining methods 共type and number of fasten- In fact, the product must be designed in concert with the
ers, methods such as soldering, welding and adhesives etc.兲 capabilities/limitations of the selected manufacturing process.
• Mechanisms Therefore in order to reap maximum benefits from a manufac-
• Actuation methods 共electro-mechanical, pneumatic, and hy- turing system, we stress the importance of the following attributes
draulic etc.兲 being common across all products within a family:
• Sensors 共Type of sensors: optical, pressure etc.兲 • Manufacturing methods
4 Vendor base • Part locators and reference surfaces
5 Number and type of secondary operations required. • Manufacturing and assembly related features
• Fastening and joining schemes
Cost of Complexity. The use of standard components typi- • General spatial orientation of the product features
cally helps in lowering the complexity, cost and lead-time of
product development. From the product design and development Definition of Complete Commonality Across Models. As-
point of view, any variation in design leads to increased cost due pects that differentiate members of a product family may include
to an increase in quality assurance testing, uncertainties associated a set of components and/or characteristics that influence the per-
兺
i⫽1
CCIi⫺ 兺 MinCCI
i⫽1
i
When ni⫽N, the function that maps to component i is accom-
plished using the same architecture in all models. However, if ni
PCI⫽ P P ⫻100 (1) ⬍N, this implies that the function 共that component i maps to兲 is
兺 MaxCCI ⫺ 兺 MinCCI
i⫽1
i
i⫽1
i
performed with a different set of components in at least one
model, and thus the architecture is different. In order to capture
the size, material and assembly variations of the component across
models, we have introduced the three factors f1i , f2i , and f3i . The
where,
size factor, f1i , is computed as the ratio of the greatest number of
CCIi⫽Component Commonality Index for component i models that share component i with identical size and shape to the
⫽ni⫻f1i⫻f2i⫻f3i greatest possible number of models that could have shared the
MaxCCIi⫽Maximum possible Component Commonality Index component i with identical size and shape 共namely, ni兲. Ideally, if
for component i ⫽ N in all models that share component i, the component is identical in
size and shape, then the size factor f1i would equal 1. On the other
MinCCIi⫽Minimum possible Component Commonality Index hand, if no two models in the family have this component identi-
for component i ⫽ cal in size and shape, then the size factor f1i would take its lowest
1 1 1 1 value 共namely, 1/ni兲. The other two factors, f2i and f3i , are deter-
n i⫻ ⫻ ⫻ ⫽ 2 mined in a similar manner.
n i ni n i n i
When calculating the PCI, in order to gain values between 0
P⫽Total number of non-differentiating components that can and 100 we subtract the minimum possible value of the CCI and
potentially be standardized across models normalize by the maximum possible value of the CCI. The mini-
N⫽Number of products in the product family mum value occurs when each of the size/shape, materials, and
ni⫽Number of products in the product family that have com- assembly factors take on their lowest value. In this case, CCIi
ponent i ⫽ni⫻1/ni⫻1/ni⫻1/ni⫽1/ni2. The maximum value occurs when
f1i⫽Size and shape factor for component i f1i , f2i , and f3i have a value of 1, and the component is present in
each of the family members (ni⫽N). In this case, CCIi⫽N. each member of the family were the same, then ni 共in the 3rd
Tables 2, 3, and 4 show tabulated calculations of the PCI for each column of the PCI Table兲 would always be equal to N.
of three Walkman product families. This analysis of product line commonality using the PCI cap-
The closer the PCI index is to 100, the better are the firm’s tures the differences in component level commonality observed in
efforts towards a value optimizing design. In the case of Sony’s the same product family across three different manufacturers. The
family of Walkmans 共not including Sports models兲, the PCI was differences in the level of commonality of components across
determined to be 87.0 共see Table 2兲, for the RCA family of prod-
these product families should account for some very significant
ucts, it was determined to be 38.4 共see Table 3兲, and for Radio
Shack, it was 43.5 共see Table 4兲. To give the PCI an intuitive differences in the product development costs and quality of these
appeal, we can think of it as the percentage of non-product differ- products. In the case of Sony, sharing as many as 87% of the
entiating components that are identical. We can say that Sony non-product differentiating components between the low-end
achieves 87% commonality in non-product differentiating compo- 共$27兲 and the high-end 共$90兲 models should ensure not only
nents, while Radio Shack and RCA achieve roughly 40% com- higher quality across products, but also enable them to lower their
monality for non-product differentiating components. If we weigh overall development costs.
this information together with the total number of components in
the product family, we can begin to assess the relative impact that Validation. The objective of the PCI is to provide a percent
a change in the PCI value would have in terms of manufacturing common of non-differentiating components. It is tempting to do
and development costs. away with PCI, a seemingly complex metric, and employ a
We make no assumption or precondition that the PCI be applied straight forward measure of percent of components that are com-
only to families with uniform architecture. The core function mon across a product line. The difficulty with such oversimplifi-
which comes from the function diagram describe ‘‘what to ac- cation lies in defining what is ‘‘common’’? Is a component ‘‘com-
complish’’ without reference to ‘‘how to accomplish.’’ Thus, the mon’’ if it is present in two of the five family members? Or does
core function is independent of architecture. If the architecture of it have to be present in all five? An added level of complexity in
the metric is required to ‘‘scale’’ the level of commonality, address the tradeoffs between commonality and the total number
depending on how many members of the family share the of parts. The issues are complex and necessarily specific to the
component. particular product and manufacturing system. However, the nor-
The PCI table groups information that is more valuable than malized PCI presented here can give an indication as to how well
simple quoting of a percentage. This accounts for the inclusion of a particular firm’s strategy is working when compared to compet-
the factors f1 , f2 , and f3 . In the most straight forward approach, ing firms.
two parts would be considered common if they had identical size, Generally, a modular design tends to have more components
geometry, and material. Otherwise, they would be uncommon. than a multi-functional design performing the same overall func-
However, by splitting up the ‘‘common-ness’’ of parts into three tion. The modular design will also tend to be more suited for
categories, it gives more information to the user. A glance at the
sharing parts across products. On the other hand, a product family
PCI table will not only tell the user that, for example, their PCI
designed on the basis of multi-functional design principles will
ranks low in comparison to a competitor’s, but also that they can
target improvement activity on a specific aspect such as fastening tend to have fewer common parts across models that are less
and assembly scheme, or architecture. suited for sharing. An optimum balance exists between the func-
tional content that each part should have and the level of com-
Benchmarking Through Normalized Product Line Com- monality that should exist across products within a product fam-
monality Index. In order to benchmark one company’s efforts ily. The ultimate goal of any product development team is not
towards an increased sharing of components across products only to maximize the level of shared parts across models but also
within a product family with the efforts of another company, we to effectively control the number of parts per product. Fewer parts
need to consider both the product line commonality index 共PCI兲 per product results in fewer part management related transactions
and also the total number of components that are present in each and thereby minimizes the level of complexity faced on the shop
of the products under consideration. It is important to remember floor. This is the rationale for normalizing the PCI index for the
that it is difficult to identify a generic strategy that can adequately number of parts that are used in each of the models.
Closure
In this paper, we have analyzed the factors that contribute to
product complexity in general, and developed an objective mea-
sure to capture the level to which firms successfully share non-
product differentiating parts across products in a given product
family. The PCI measure provides designers with a method by
which they can benchmark their performance with the best in the
industry and it also highlights potential opportunities for improve-
ment in design efficiencies.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by Ford Motor Company, Dearborn,
Michigan under the University Grants Program 共1997兲. The au-
thors would like to thank undergraduate seniors, Ms. Michelle
Lornz and Ms. Tara Greene, for their research assistance in diss-
section of several walkmans and preparation of PCI tables.
References
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