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J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
DOI 10.1007/s10845-007-0003-2
Product family design and platform-based product development:
a state-of-the-art review
Jianxin (Roger) Jiao · Timothy W. Simpson ·
Zahed Siddique
Received: August 2005 / Accepted: February 2006 / Published online: July 2007
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract Product family design and platform-based
product development has received much attention over
the last decade. This paper provides a comprehensive
review of the state-of-the-art research in this field. A
decision framework is introduced to reveal a holistic
view of product family design and platform-based prod-
uct development, encompassing both front-end and
back-end issues. The review is organized according to
various topics in relation to product families, includ-
ing fundamental issues and definitions, product portfolio
and product family positioning, platform-based product
family design, manufacturing and production, as well as
supply chain management. Major challenges and future
research directions are also discussed.
Keywords Product family · Product platform ·
Product architecture · Customization · Variety
modularity · Commonality · Configuration
Introduction
Manufacturing companies have devoted much atten-
tion to the contemporary battlefield called mass cus-
tomization, which aims to satisfy individual customer
needs by introducing product proliferation while taking
advantage of mass production efficiency (Pine, 1993).
J. (Roger) Jiao (B)
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: jiao@pmail.ntu.edu.sg
T. W. Simpson
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
Z. Siddique
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
To compete in the marketplace, manufacturers have
been seeking for expansion of their product lines and
differentiation of their product offerings with the intu-
itively-appealing belief that large product variety may
stimulate sales and generate additional revenue (Ho &
Tang, 1998). Initially variety does improve sales as the
offerings become more attractive; but as variety keeps
increasing, the law of diminishing returns suggests that
the benefits do not keep pace (Wortmann, Muntslag, &
Timmermans, 1997). Facing such a dilemma, a company
must optimize its external variety with respect to the
internal complexity resulting from product differentia-
tion (Tseng & Jiao, 1996).
Designing and developing product families has been
well recognized as an effective means to achieve the
economy of scale in order to accommodate an increasing
product variety across diverse market niches (Meyer &
Utterback, 1993; Sundgren, 1999). In addition to lever-
aging the cost of delivering variety by reusing proven
elements in a firm’s activities and offerings, product fam-
ily design can offer a multitude of benefits including
reduction in development risks and system complex-
ity, improved ability to upgrade products, and enhanced
flexibility and responsiveness of manufacturing processes
(Sawhney, 1998). Many companies are investing in prod-
uct family development practices in order to provide
sufficient variety to the market while maintaining the
economies of scale and scope within their manufactur-
ing capabilities (Robertson & Ulrich, 1998).
A sizeable body of research on product family design
and platform-based product development has been
reported over the last decade (Simpson, 2004). The lit-
erature involves many, if not all, aspects of product
fulfillment within a manufacturing enterprise. Product
family design and development has been tackled from
6 J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
various perspectives as well, such as in the areas of busi-
ness strategy, marketing, manufacturing and production,
customer engineering, information technology, and gen-
eral management. This paper provides a comprehen-
sive review of the state-of-the-art research regarding
product family design and development. To proceed,
a holistic view of product family development is pre-
sented first, encompassing both front-end and back-end
issues of product families. With respect to the outlined
decision framework of product family development, the
literature review is organized in the subsequent sections
according to various topics in relation to product fam-
ilies, which emphasize on the fundamental issues and
definitions, product portfolio and product family posi-
tioning, product family design, manufacturing and pro-
duction, and supply chain management, respectively.
Finally key challenges and future research directions
are outlined.
Decision framework
Product family design and development essentially
entails a conceptual structure and overall logical orga-
nization of generating a family of products by providing
a generic umbrella to capture and utilize commonal-
ity, within which each new product is instantiated and
extended so as to anchor future designs to a common
product line structure. The rationale lies in not only
unburdening the knowledge base from keeping variant
forms of the same solution, but also in modeling the
design process of an entire class of products that can
widely variegate designs based on individually custom-
ized requirements within a coherent framework (Jiao &
Tseng, 1999).
Figure 1 illustrates the decision framework of product
family design and development along the entire spec-
trum of product realization according to the concept of
design domains (Suh, 2001). Based on such a holistic
view, product family design and development encom-
passes consecutively five domains, namely the customer,
functional, physical, process and logistics domains. Prod-
uct family decision-making involves a series of “what-
how” mappings between these domains.
The customer domain is characterized by a set of cus-
tomer needs (CNs) representing segmentation of mar-
kets that demand for product families and triggering
downstream product family design mappings in a cas-
cading manner. The CNs are first translated into func-
tional requirements (FRs) in the functional domain,
in which designers take into account engineering con-
cerns and elaborate these requirements based on avail-
able product technologies. The mapping between the
customer and functional domains constitutes the front-
end issues associated with developing product families.
Such a product family definition task is always carried
out within an existing product portfolio and manifests
itself through those common practices of order con-
figuration and sales force automation. Product family
design solutions are generated in the physical domain
by mapping FRs to design parameters (DPs) based on
the shared product platform. This stage involves typical
decisions regarding product family design and configu-
ration. At the front-end, the product portfolio articu-
lates detailed achievement of customer satisfaction in
the customer domain in the form of specifications of
functionality in the functional domain. On the other
hand, the main focus of platform-based product fam-
ily design is the technical feasibility of DPs in terms of
fulfilling the specified functionality.
The back-end issues associated with product fami-
lies involve the process and logistics domains, which are
characterized by process variables (PVs) and logistics
variables (LVs), respectively. The mapping from DPs to
PVs entails the process design task, which must gen-
erate manufacturing and production planning within
existing process capabilities and utilize repetitions in
tooling, setup, equipment, routings, etc. Correspond-
ing to a product platform, production processes can be
organized as a process platform in the form of stan-
dard routings, thus facilitating production configuration
for diverse product family design solutions (Jiao, Tseng,
Ma, & Zou, 2000). Since the main concern in the process
domain is manufacturability and cost commitment, pro-
cess design is the de facto enabler of mass production
efficiency.
To achieve mass customization, more and more com-
panies are moving towards assemble-to-order produc-
tion (Wortmann et al., 1997). Outsourcing has emerged
as a promising strategy for leveraging resources and
capabilities worldwide while focusing on the core com-
petency. It thus becomes imperative to coordinate
product and process design of product families within a
supply chain framework. The logistics domain addresses
the supply chain related issues of product family ful-
fillment, which are mainly about supply chain config-
uration, resource allocation, supplier management and
supply contracting. A supply platform plays an impor-
tant role in supporting supply chain design through the
mapping from the process domain to the logistics
domain. The main concern is to align production con-
figuration and supply chain decisions. Throughout the
mappings across these five domains, there are some fun-
damental issues related to product family design deci-
sions, including conceptual implications of a product
family, product platform, product architecture, product
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29 7

Fig. 1 A holistic view of

product family design and
development

variety, modularity and commonality. The following review 1998) to being industry and product specific (Ericsson
starts with these fundamentals. & Erixon, 1999; Sanderson & Uzumeri, 1995). In addi-
tion, the meaning of platform differs in scope. Some
definitions and descriptions focus mainly on the product
or artifact itself (McGrath, 1995; Meyer & Utterback,
Fundamental issues
1993), whereas others try to explore the platform con-
cept in terms of a firm’s value chain (Sawhney, 1998).
Product family
There are two streams of research prevailing in the
field of developing product platforms. One perspective
Streams of individual products generated by firms may
refers to a platform as a physical one, namely a collec-
be thought of as evolving families of products (Meyer &
tion of “elements” shared by several products. Accord-
Utterback, 1993). A product family refers to a set of sim-
ingly, the major concern is how to identify the com-
ilar products that are derived from a common platform
mon denominators for a range of products (Wilhelm,
and yet possess specific features/functionality to meet
1997; Ericsson & Erixon, 1999). The effort is geared
particular customer requirements (Meyer & Lehnerd,
towards the extraction of those common product ele-
1997). Each individual product within a product fam-
ments, features, and/or subsystems that are stable and
ily, i.e., a family member, is called a product variant or
well understood, so as to provide a basis for introducing
instance. While a product family targets a certain market
value-added differentiating features (Moore, Louviere,
segment, each product variant is developed to address a
& Verma, 1999).
specific subset of customer needs of the market segment.
Meyer and Lehnerd’s work (1997) is the represen-
All product variants share some common structures and
tative of another dominating perspective to product
product technologies, which form the platform of the
platform. They define a product platform as “a set of
product family (Erens & Verhulst, 1997).
subsystems and interfaces developed to form a com-
The interpretation of product families depends on
mon structure from which a stream of derivative prod-
different perspectives. From the marketing and sales
ucts can be efficiently developed and produced” (Meyer
perspective, the functional structure of product families
& Lehnerd, 1997,p. 39). The major issue is to exploit
exhibits a firm’s product line or product portfolio and
the shared logic and cohesive architecture underlying a
thus is characterized by various sets of functional fea-
product platform. McGrath (1995) defines product plat-
tures for different customer groups (Agard & Kusiak,
form as a collection of the common elements, especially
2004). The engineering view of product families embod-
the underlying core technology, implemented across a
ies different product technologies and the associated
range of products. Robertson and Ulrich (1998) define
manufacturability and thereby is characterized by vari-
a platform as the collection of assets that are shared by
ous design parameters, components, and assembly struc-
a set of products. The assets include components, pro-
tures (De Lit & Delchambre, 2003; Simpson, 2004).
cesses, knowledge, as well as people and relationships.
Baldwin & Clark (2000) define three aspects of a
Product platform product platform: (1) its modular architecture, (2) the
interfaces, and (3) the standards that provide design
Product platforms have been defined diversely, ranging rules to which the modules must conform. To facilitate
from being general and abstract (Robertson & Ulrich, platform-based product family development, interface
8 J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
management is reported as a distinct process of defin-
ing the physical interfaces between subsystems (Sund-
gren, 1999). Zamirowski and Otto (1999) discern three
types of product platforms: modular platforms, scalable
platforms, and generational platforms. A modular plat-
form is used to create variants through configuration
of existing modules (Meyer & Lehnerd, 1997). A scal-
able platform facilitates the differentiation of variants
that possess the same function with varying capacities
(Simpson, Maier, & Mistree, 2001a). A generational
platform leverages product life cycles for rapid next
generation development (Martin & Ishii, 2002). One
endeavor towards product platform development is to
design product families in the way of “stretching” or
“scaling” (Rothwell & Gardiner, 1990).
Product architecture
The concept of architecture, with respect to product
design, is synonymous with the layout, configuration, or
topology of functions and their embodiment (Van Wie,
Rajan, Campbell, Stone, & Wood, 2003). Product archi-
tecture can be defined as the way in which the functional
elements of a product are arranged into physical units
and the way in which these units interact (Ulrich and
Eppinger, 1995). Fujita and Yoshida (2004) point out
one important characteristic to discern the architecture
of a family of products from that of a single product—
the simultaneous handling of multiple products. Erens
& Verhulst (1997) consider the functional and physi-
cal architectures for product families and describe them
using a package of single product models. Yu, Gonz-
alez-Zugasti, and Otto (1999) approach product archi-
tectures from a functional perspective by defining the
architecture based on customer demands. Ulrich (1995)
discusses the relationship between product architectures
and managerial problems related to product strategies.
The typology of product architectures suggests that
the architecture can be either integral or modular
(Muffatto & Roveda, 2002). Modularity has been well
studied from many perspectives (Bi & Zhang, 2001;
Fixson, 2002; Gershenson, Prasad, & Zhang, 2003).
Ulrich and Tung (1991) define five categories of mod-
ularity, i.e., component swapping, component sharing,
fabricate-to-fit, bus and sectional modularity. Pine (1993)
adds a sixth: mix modularity, which is frequently encoun-
tered in the painting and chemical industries. While most
extensions (Du, Jiao, & Tseng, 2001; Kusiak & Huang,
1996) are built upon these basic modularity types, the
current practice mostly refers to the product architec-
ture as physical structures in terms of physical parts or
components (Henderson & Clark, 1990).
While modularity deals with the mapping from func-
tions to components, integrality involves standardiza-
tion and decoupling of the interfaces between com-
ponents (Ulrich and Eppinger, 1995). Robertson and
Ulrich (1998) observe that increasing modularity with
proper integrity is conducive to the management of
tradeoff between distinctiveness and commonality in
product architectures. Sosa et al. (2003) observe the
importance of integrality and modularity in design team
interactions and introduce a method of identifying
whether a system is modular or integral based on anal-
ysis of component interactions using a design structure
matrix (DSM). Fixson (2002) constructs a DSM to ana-
lyze the total number of functions that components
under consideration provide on the other, based on
which modular and integral architectures are identified.
Oosterman (2001) investigates how to match product
architectures with an organization in order to improve
product development projects. Whitney (2003) studies
total modularity and interfaces in the context of design
economy. Cutherell (1996) finds that integral architec-
tures are often driven by product performance or cost,
while modular architectures are driven by variety, prod-
uct change, engineering standards, and service require-
ments.
Jiao and Tseng (1999) assert that a product family
architecture involves systematic planning of modularity
and commonality in terms of building blocks and their
configuration structures across the functional, technical
and structural views. Zamirowski and Otto (1999) point
out the necessity to develop the product architecture and
platform by synchronizing multiple views such as those
from customer needs, functional structures and physical
architectures. The leveraging of modularity and com-
monality in product family architecture development is
also supported by Siddique, Rosen, and Wang (1998).
Muffatto and Roveda (2002) study multiple aspects of
product architectures including functions, requirements,
technological solutions, product concepts, product strat-
egies and platforms, as well as production and assem-
blies. To address the question of how differences in the
product architecture affect resource consumption dur-
ing the design phase, Eppinger, Whitney, Smith, and
Gebala (1994) link the task structure of the design pro-
cess to the product architecture.
Product variety
Product variety is defined as the diversity of products
that a production system provides to the marketplace
(Ulrich, 1995). Du et al. (2001) discern functional vari-
ety from technical variety. While functional variety is
most related to customer satisfaction, technical variety
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
is relevant to manufacturability and costs. The two types
of variety motivate two different design strategies. The
design for “functional” variety strategy aims at increas-
ing functional variety and manifests itself through vast
research in the business community, such as product line
structuring (Sanderson & Uzumeri, 1995), equilibrium
pricing (Choi, Desarbo, & Harker, 1990), product posi-
tioning (Kaul & Rao, 1995), and so on. To the contrary,
design for “technical” variety aims to reduce technical
variety so as to gain cost advantages. Under this category,
research includes variety reduction program (Suzue &
Kohdate, 1990), design for variety (Martin & Ishii, 1997),
design for postponement (Feitzinger and Lee, 1997),
function sharing (Ulrich and Eppinger, 1995), design for
modularity Erixon and Ostgren (1993), reconfiguration
for variety (Brabazon & MacCarthy, 2004), etc.
Modularity vs. commonality
The concepts of modules and modularity are central
in constructing product architectures (Ulrich, 1995). A
module refers to a physical or conceptual grouping of
components that share some characteristics. Modularity
is to separate a system into independent parts or mod-
ules that can be treated as logical units (Newcomb, Bras,
& Rosen, 1996). What is important in characterizing
modularity is the interaction among modules. Modules
are identified in such a way that between-module (inter-
module) interactions are minimal whereas within-mod-
ule (infra-module) interactions may be high (Ulrich,
1995); therefore, decomposition is the main concern of
modularity.
In addition, product family design achieves modu-
larity from multiple viewpoints, involving functionality,
solution technologies, and physical structures. Corre-
spondingly, there are three types of modularity associ-
ated with product families: (1) functional modularity, (2)
technical modularity, and (3) physical modularity. These
three types of modularity are characterized by specific
measures of module interaction from a particular point
of view. As for functional modularity, the interaction is
exhibited by the relevance of FRs across different cus-
tomer groups. Each customer group is characterized by
a particular set of FRs. A customer grouping lies only
in the functional view and is independent of the other
two views, meaning it is solution-neutral. In the techni-
cal view, modularity is determined according to techno-
logical feasibility of design solutions. The interaction is
thus judged by the coupling of DPs to satisfy given FRs
regardless of their physical realization in manufactur-
ing. In the structural view, physical interactions derived
from manufacturability become the major concern of
physical modularity.
9
It is commonality that entails the difference of the
architecture of product families from that of a single
product. While modularity resembles decomposition of
product structures and is applicable to describing mod-
ule (product) types, commonality characterizes the
grouping of similar module (product) variants of a spe-
cific module (product) type that is characterized by
modularity. Therefore, clustering is the main concern of
commonality. Corresponding to the three types of mod-
ularity, there are three types of commonality, namely
functional commonality, technical commonality, and
physical commonality.
The correlation of modularity and commonality is
embodied in class–member relationships. A product
structure is defined in terms of its modularity, through
which module types are specified. Product variants
derived from this product structure share the same mod-
ule types and entail different instances of every module
type. In other words, a class of products (i.e., prod-
uct family) is described by modularity, whereas prod-
uct variants differentiate according to the commonality
among module instances.
Product portfolio and product family positioning
The original mindset of developing product families is
to make wide variety of products available and letting
customers “vote” on the shelf. This practice, however,
not only seems to be wasteful and expensive, but also
tends to constrain customers’ ultimate satisfaction, lead-
ing to mass confusion (Huffman & Kahn, 1998). Many
marketing studies have been reported that some of the
product variants may be more preferred as expected,
while others, although they may be equally sound in the
technical sense, may not be favored by the customers.
The mismatch between expectation and achievement is
mainly due to the diversity of customer requirements
and preferences. Besides, not all existing market seg-
ments create the same opportunity for different com-
panies in the same industry due to the discrepancy of
their targets, strategies, technologies, cultures, etc. Pine
(1993) reports some common problems of companies
giving customers more choices than they actually want
or need. This essentially means a product family posi-
tioning problem—how to offer right product variety to
the right target market.
Product family positioning (i.e., product portfolio
planning) has been traditionally dealt with in the man-
agement and marketing fields with emphasis on portfo-
lio optimization based on customer preferences where
the objective is to maximize profit, share of choices,
or sales. Consequently, measuring customer preferences
10
among multi-attribute alternatives has been a primary
concern in marketing research. Among many methods
developed, conjoint analysis is one of the most popular
preference-based techniques for identifying and evalu-
ating new product concepts (Green & Krieger, 1985).
While many methods excel in determining optimal or
near-optimal product designs from conjoint data, tradi-
tional conjoint analysis is limited to considering input
from the customers only, rather than to analyze dis-
tinct conjoint data from both customers and engineering
concerns (Tarasewich & Nair, 2001).
In the engineering community, product portfolio deci-
sions have been extensively studied with particular focus
on the costs and flexibility issues associated with product
variety and mix (Lancaster, 1990). Meyer and Lehnerd
(1997) introduce a market segmentation grid to leverage
product families across multiple market segments. Far-
rell and Simpson (2001) apply the market segmentation
grid to identify potential platform leveraging strategies
for a line of flow control valves. Meyer and Utterback
(1993) attempt to map the evolution of a product family
based on extensions and upgrades to a product platform.
Nevertheless, the effect of product lines on the profit
side of the equation has been seldom considered (Yano
& Dobson, 1998). Few industries have developed an
effective set of analyses to manage the profit from vari-
ety and the cost of complexity simultaneously in product
portfolio decision-making (Otto, Tang, & Seering, 2003).
Markus and Váncza (1998) and Jiao & Zhang (2005)
observe the importance of taking into account the inter-
action between the customer and engineering concerns
for product portfolio planning. In particular, portfolio
decisions with customer-engineering interaction need to
address the tradeoffs between the economy of scope in
profit from the customers and markets and the disecon-
omy of scope in design, production, and distribution at
the backend of product fulfillment (Yano & Dobson,
1998). Moreover, achieving a synergy of engineering con-
cerns among products in portfolio planning is deemed
to be increasingly beneficial given those efforts in many
industries to improve coordination of design and manu-
facturing activities across product families and platforms
(Morgan, Daniels, & Kouvelis, 2001). The literature re-
lated to product family positioning generally stems from
three broad fields that are closely correlated: optimal
product design, product positioning, and product line
design. Each is discussed in the sections that follow.
Optimal product design
While traditional design emphasizes more on the design-
ers’ perspective Tarasewich & Nair (2001), measuring
customer preferences in terms of expected utilities is
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
the primary concern of optimal product design (Krish-
nan & Gupta, 2001) or decision-based design (Hazel-
rigg, 1998). In typical preference-based product design,
conjoint analysis (Green & Krieger, 1985) has proven
to be an effective means to estimate individual level
part-worth utilities associated with individual product
attributes. The conjoint-based searching for optimal
product designs always results in combinatorial opti-
mization problems because typically discrete attributes
are used in conjoint analysis (Kaul & Rao, 1995).
Multi-attribute utility analysis is widely used to pre-
dict composite utilities for any feasible product profile
constructed from the underlying attribute level part-
worth utilities. It assumes that the utilities of multi-
ple attributes are mutually independent (Wassenaar &
Chen, 2001). This may not hold true for a product port-
folio where the customer-perceived utility of a partic-
ular attribute may change due to the availability of
other offerings (for example, comparing with counter-
part attributes or levels). In addition, combining differ-
ent individual attribute utility functions into a single
multi-attribute utility function inevitably involves multi-
attribute weighting and normalization. The weights are
determined based upon the rank ordering of alterna-
tives; however, a selected alternative may result from
the underlying weighting method rather than the qual-
ity of the alternative itself (Wassenaar & Chen, 2001).
Product positioning
Product positioning involves decisions about abstract
perceptual attributes and customer heterogeneity (Kaul
& Rao, 1995). The basic principle lies in the multidimen-
sional scaling of customer perceptions via factor anal-
ysis, discriminant analysis or similarity scaling (Green
& Krieger, 1985). A number of multidimensional scal-
ing-based algorithms have been developed, dependent
upon the number of ideal points (individuals or seg-
ments) in the joint space (Kaul & Rao, 1995). Genetic
algorithms have been proven to outperform most exist-
ing optimal positioning algorithms in dealing with the
choice set heterogeneity between the customer’s deci-
sion setting and variations in the size of the individuals’
choice sets (Balakrishnan & Jacob, 1996).
On the other hand, many algorithms have been for-
mulated with the attempt to improve the realism of
the customer choice setting. Discrete choice analysis is
widely used to identify patterns in choices that custom-
ers make among competing products (Ho & Tang, 1998).
It allows for the examination of the interaction between
market shares and product features, price, service, and
promotion with respect to different classes of custom-
ers. In general, a probabilistic choice model tends to
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
provide better solutions and larger share projections for
new product positioning.
Product line design
Most literature on product line design tackles the opti-
mal selection of products by maximizing the surplus—
the margin between the customer-perceived utility and
the price of the product (Kaul & Rao, 1995). Other
objectives widely used in selecting products among a
large set of potential products within a target mar-
ket include maximization of profit, net present value,
a seller’s welfare, market share, and share of choices,
to name but a few.
While numerous papers in marketing literature deal
with the selection problem using various objectives orig-
inated from the profit, few of them explicitly model the
costs of manufacturing and engineering design (Yano &
Dobson, 1998). Kim and Chhajed (2001) observe that,
in addition to choosing which products to produce, one
must also choose the process by which these products are
manufactured. Park and Simpson (2005) articulate the
benefits of different resource sharing methods related to
product platform design. Ramdas and Sawhney (2001)
consider situations where the fixed cost of a component
is shared by two products. Dobson and Yano (1994)
allow for complex interactions by admitting per-prod-
uct fixed costs, resources that can be shared by multiple
products, as well as technology choices for each. Morgan
et al. (2001) examine the benefits of integrating market-
ing implications of product mix with more detailed man-
ufacturing cost implications, which sheds light on the
impact of alternative manufacturing environment char-
acteristics on the composition of the optimal product
line.
Platform-based product family design
Corresponding to the scalable and modular product
platforms, there are two types of approaches to plat-
form-based product family design. One common app-
roach is called scalable (namely parametric) product
family design, whereby scaling variables are used to
“stretch” or “shrink” the product platform in one or
more dimensions to satisfy a variety of customer needs
(Simpson et al., 2001a). The other approach is referred to
as configurational product family design, which aims to
develop a modular product platform, from which prod-
uct family members are derived by adding, substituting,
and/or removing one or more functional modules (Du
et al., 2001; Ulrich, 1995).
11
Scalable product family design
The scalable approach was first proposed by Simpson et
al. (2001a). They introduce a product platform concept
exploration method based on robust design principles
by minimizing the sensitivity of performance variations
in scaling factors. Messac et al. (2002a) integrate physical
programming into the product platform concept explo-
ration method to increase its effectiveness. Fellini et al.
(2002a) consider commonality as a constraint in prod-
uct family design. Nayak, Chen, and Simpson (2002)
incorporate the platform selection problem into the com-
monality and performance trade-off procedure by max-
imizing commonality at the product family level while
satisfying the design requirements of each individual
product. Messac, Martinez, and Simpson (2002b) intro-
duce a product family penalty function to the selection
of right combination of common and scaling variables,
where those design variables causing more performance
loss are identified as scaling factors. Fellini et al. (2002b)
employ sensitivity analysis to derive the penalty on per-
formance loss due to commonality. In the context of
designing a family of aircraft, Willcox and Wakayama
(2003) apply multidisciplinary optimization to gain
insight into the effect of design variable scaling across
multiple aircraft that carry different missions yet share
common parts.
Scalable product family design involves two basic
tasks (Simpson, 2004). The first one is platform selec-
tion—to determine which design parameters that take
common values. While many existing methods assume
that the platform architecture is known a priori (Fujita
et al., 1999), some approaches determine platform vari-
ables along with scalable variables during optimization
(Akundi, Simpson, & Reed, 2005; Dai & Scott, 2004).
The subsequent task is to determine the optimal values
of common and distinctive variables by satisfying per-
formance and economic requirements. Most approaches
consider only a single product platform, where each plat-
form variable is shared across the entire product fam-
ily. This strategy excels in computational simplicity; but
may lead to a situation that some low-end products may
be over-designed and certain high-end products may be
under-designed (Dai & Scott, 2004). The other strat-
egy is to consider multiple product platforms in product
family design, such that design variables can be shared
by any subset of product variants within the product
family (De Weck, Suh, & Chang, 2003) Multiple-plat-
form design enhances exploration of the solution space,
whereas sacrificing the computational efficiency (Seep-
ersad, Mistree, & Allen, 2002).
Simpson (2004) reviews optimization algorithms
widely used for product family design. Linear and
12
non-linear programming algorithms, such as SLP, SQP,
NLP and GRG, are employed in many studies, in addi-
tion to derivative-free methods including genetic algo-
rithms, simulated annealing, pattern search, and branch
and bound techniques. Some specific algorithms and
heuristics are also available for use depending upon par-
ticular solution frameworks, including decision-based
design (Li & Azarm, 2002), target cascading (Kokko-
laras, Fellini, Kim, Michelena, & Papalambros, 2002),
0–1 integer programming (Fujita et al., 1999), physical
programming (Messac et al., 2002a), and the compro-
mise decision support problem (Simpson et al., 2001a).
When the design space is small, exhaustive search tech-
niques (Hernandez et al., 2001) or orthogonal arrays
(Blackenfelt, 2000a) are always adopted to enumerate
various combinations of parameter settings. In practice,
most problems involve a large number of options, which
constitutes a typical combinatorial optimization prob-
lem. As a result, genetic algorithms are most advocated
to tackle the combinatorial nature of product family
design problems (Simpson, 2004).
Configurational product family design
The configurational approach to product family design
is also frequently called module-based product family
design (Simpson, 2004). It is based on the develop-
ment of modular product architectures. As defined by
Ulrich and Tung (1991), a modular product architecture
involves one-to-one mappings from functional elements
in the function structure to the physical components of
a product, where decoupled interfaces between com-
ponents can be specified. Ulrich (1995) points out that
the modular product architecture allows each functional
element of the product to be changed independently
by changing only the corresponding component. This
is advantageous to produce custom-built products from
standard models. It also makes standardization possible,
which is essential to achieve the economy of scale; there-
fore, using modular product architectures, variety can be
created by configuring existing building blocks. Salient
issues regarding configurational product family design
include module identification, interface standardization,
and architecture embodiment as discussed next.
(1) Module identification/modularization. Erlandsson,
Erixon, and Ostgren (1992) develop a method with three
major steps that help to identify product modules. In
their method, the right product specification is attained
by adopting quality function deployment (QFD).
Module creation, interface analysis and module config-
uration are carried out through creating different mod-
ular structures according to the QFD matrix (i.e., the
house of quality). Erixon and Ostgren (1993) extend this
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
method by applying the QFD matrix to modular analy-
sis and coin it as modular function deployment (MFD)
with focus on the evaluation of module integration.
Yu et al. (2003) apply the DSM as a tool to iden-
tify highly interactive groups of product elements and
to cluster them into modules. Hölttä and Salonen (2003)
compare three modularization methods using commer-
cial products. They reveal that the MFD method is the
least repeatable, whereas the computerized DSM me-
thod is the most repeatable, and the heuristic approach
falls in between. Malmström and Malmqvist (1998) inte-
grate the DSM and MFD methods to tackle both techni-
cal and economical aspects in the early stages of product
architecture development. Stone et al. (2000) formulate
a set of heuristics for grouping functions to form a mod-
ule. Hölttä et al. (2003) develop a five-step algorithm of
grouping and creating a dendrogram for finding com-
mon modules across products for platforming a product
family. Salhieh and Kamrani (1999) employ a cluster-
ing technique for identifying design modules. Otto et al.
(2000) propose a framework for architecting a family
of products that share interchangeable modules. They
define a modularity matrix for one family of products
from a manufacturer, allowing commonalties to be easily
identified. Gershenson et al. (2003) provide an extensive
comparison of several DSM-based methods for identi-
fying modular architectures.
(2) Interface standardization. The importance of stan-
dardized interfaces in product architectures is recog-
nized by Meyer and Lehnerd (1997). Sanderson and
Uzumeri (1995) suggest that the product family evolu-
tion may have been restricted if clear and robust phys-
ical interfaces are not developed and defined carefully.
Sanchez (1994) discusses the need for distinct and stan-
dardized interfaces between the vital parts of the prod-
uct family. Sundgren (1999) explores the concept of
interface management in new product platform devel-
opment. Blackenfelt (2000b) studies robust design of
interfaces in order to increase interface commonality
among a variety of products. Ulrich and Eppinger (1995)
point out that product architecturing is tantamount to
interface definition.
Martin and Ishii (2002) introduce a coupling index to
assess the amount of coupling between modular inter-
faces to facilitate product family planning for multiple
generations. Sosa et al. (2003) identify the distinction
among interfaces from the energy, material, spatial and
informational aspects. Hillestrom (1994) proposes a
method that helps the designer clarify how interfaces
between modules influence module functions and how
to select the best interface location. Mikkola and
Gassmann (2003) introduce a modularization function
for analyzing the degree of modularity in a given product
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
architecture by taking into account the number of com-
ponents, number of interfaces and substitutability factor
of a given product architecture. van Wie et al. (2001)
address the embodiment issues of module interfaces in
terms of the connections between modules.
(3) Architecture embodiment. Newcomb et al. (1996)
investigate the methods of reasoning about sets of prod-
uct architectures and how to perform configuration de-
sign of modular products. Kamrani and Gonzalez (2003)
discuss design for modularity using a genetic algorithm-
based method. Tatikonda (1999) studies the planning
and execution of different types of projects within a
product family platform series. Gonzalez-Zugasti et al.
(2000) formulate the design of a platform-based prod-
uct family as a general optimization problem consider-
ing the constraints of individual product variants and
constraints of the family as a whole.
Agard and Kusiak (2004) apply data mining tech-
niques to product family design with emphasis on map-
ping specific functional requirements to a technical
structure. Allahverdi et al. (2002) optimize modular pro-
ducts as a generalized subset selection problem subject
to a balance of the quality loss due to modularization
and the cost of reconfiguration. Chandrasekaran, Stone,
and Mcadams (2004) propose a template approach to
product platform-based design based on prior product
design knowledge and the flow and conversion of energy
through a product. Kurtadikar and Stone (2003) use high
level customer needs alone to define the product’s base
platform and differentiating modules during the con-
ceptual design stage of product development and thus
plan a product family before considering any architec-
ture. Robertson and Ulrich (1998) articulate three tools
for supporting platform planning: product plan, differ-
entiation plan and commonality plan.
Metrics for product family design
Product family design essentially entails a type of multi-
objective optimization problems (Simpson, Siddique, &
Jiao, 2005). In many cases, such multiple criteria deci-
sion-making, given a number of alternatives at differ-
ent levels of abstraction of the product architecture,
requires to leverage on three pillars: cost, revenue and
performance. In addition, it needs to weigh the reve-
nue from product cannibalization by commonality with
respect to the cost savings from commonality (Robert-
son & Ulrich, 1998).
(1) Modularity. Prasad (1998) studies the product and
process complexity associated with design for variety,
highlighting the importance of determining the right
amount of decomposition. To quantify such a granu-
larity paradox, a measure of communication effort is
13
introduced in order to achieve an optimal balance. Ger-
shenson et al. (2003) develop a measure of relative
modularity for modular product design. Mikkola and
Gassmann (2003) assume that the degree of modular-
ity in a given product architecture is constrained by
the composition of its components. Allen and Carlson-
Skalak (1998) introduce some measures of modular-
ity for conceptual design. Ulrich (1995) simply defines
the function-to-component ratio for each product as
one modularity metric. Hölttä and Salonen (2003) pro-
pose a measure of modularity based on singular value
decomposition of the binary DSM. Guo and Gershen-
son (2004) develop a metric to measure product mod-
ularity using a component-to-component connectivity
matrix. Siddique and Rosen (2001) account for both
functional and form issues in their partitioning method
that involves combinatorics. Stone et al. (2000) develop
product family and customer needs ratings for modules.
(2) Commonality. Kota et al. (2000) develop a mea-
sure that captures the level of commonality in a prod-
uct family. With application to automotive underbodies,
Siddique, Rosen, and Wang (1998) propose to measure
component commonality and connection commonality
in order to capture characteristics of platform common-
ality and product variety. Maupin and Stauffer (2000)
take into account simplicity, direct costs, and delayed
differentiation for commonality metrics. Thonemann and
Brandeau (2000) present an approach for determining
the optimal level of commonality in a sub-product that
does not differentiate models from the customer’s point
of view. Emphasizing on component sharing, Ramdas et
al. (2003) present a methodology for determining which
version of a set of related components should be offered
to optimally support a defined finished product port-
folio. In the work of Fellini et al. (2002a), an optimal
design problem is formulated as the maximization of
commonality by choosing the product components to be
shared without exceeding a user-specified performance
loss tolerance and subject to different levels of perfor-
mance losses. McAdams and Wood (2002) develop a
quantitative metric for design-by-analogy based on the
functional similarity of products. Thevenot and Simpson
(2005) compare various commonality indices for assess-
ing product families, including the Degree of Common-
ality Index (Collier, 1981), Total Constant Commonality
Index (Wacker & Trelevan, 1986), Product Line Com-
monality Index (Kota et al., 2000), Percent Common-
ality Index (Siddique et al., 1998), Commonality Index
(Martin & Ishii, 1997), and Component Part Common-
ality Index (Jiao & Tseng, 2000).
(3) Variety/distinctiveness. Martin & Ishii (1997) quan-
tify the costs of providing variety in order to quantita-
tively guide designers in developing products that incur
14
minimum variety costs. Through commonality analysis,
van Wie et al. (2006) study how differences between
platform elements and differentiating elements are evi-
denced in the product layout or configuration. Simpson
and D’Souza (2004) introduce a genetic algorithm-based
approach to product family design that balances the
commonality of the products in the family with the indi-
vidual performance (i.e., distinctiveness) of each prod-
uct in the family. A Product Variety Index is proposed
by Simpson et al. (2001b) to help resolve this tradeoff.
Dobrescu and Reich (2003) propose a variety index and
a standardization index that resemble the commonality
indices of Martin and Ishii (2002).
(4) Cost. Kim and Chhajed (2001) develop an eco-
nomic model that considers a market consisting of a high
segment and a low segment. They determine that large
commonality decreases production costs but makes the
products more indistinguishable from one another,
which makes the product more desirable for the low
segment but less desirable for the high segment. Fisher
et al. (1999) present an analytic model of component
sharing based on empirical testing of varying practice
of component sharing for automotive braking systems.
Fujita and Yoshida (2004) develop a monotonic cost
model for the assessment of benefits of commonality.
Gonzalez-Zugasti et al. (2000) propose a methodology
to design product platforms and variants with consider-
ation of technical performance requirements and prod-
uct family costs.
Fixson (2005) outlines a roadmap for product archi-
tecture costing from a product life cycle perspective.
Park and Simpson (2005) examine the effects of com-
monality decisions on individual costs based on activity-
based costing. To link modularity and the cost, Fixson
(2002) develops a multi-dimensional product architec-
ture description method that considers the level of func-
tion-component allocation, interface intensity, interface
reversibility, and interface standardization. Siddique and
Rosen (2001) assess the cost implications of product
architectural decisions when product architectures allow
sharing of parts, modules, or components of a product
across product families. The savings from the reuse of
designs affect both development cost and time (Sid-
dique, 2001). To design robust product families and
determine product platform extent, Hernandez et al.
(2001) estimate production time, the material cost, and
the inventory cost by modeling manufacturing issues
as functions of design variables. Martin & Ishii (1997)
employ a setup cost index as a surrogate for the indirect
cost associated with product variety.
(5) Profit/valuation. Numerous methods dealing with
optimal design use various objectives originated from
the profit or expected revenue (Fujita & Yoshida, 2004;
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
Nelson, Parkinson, & Papalambros, 2001). Many stud-
ies have revealed that such a profit measure based on
the dollar value is unrealistic in most cases (Tarasewich
& Nair, 2001). As such, researchers have been devel-
oping various instruments to improve the measurement
of profit performance. Balakrishnan and Jacob (1996)
introduce share of choices as the objective. Chen and Lin
(2002) try to maximize performance ratings of design
concepts while minimizing functional coupling and cou-
pling of design concepts with respect to constraints.
Michalek et al. (2005) formulate the evaluation prob-
lem as profit maximization by minimizing the technical
performance deviation. De Weck et al. (2003) propose to
optimize product platform design by maximizing overall
product family profitability and reducing the develop-
ment time and cost. Jiao & Zhang (2005) combine the
consumer surplus with the producer surplus based on
the customer-perceived value of design.
Typical approaches to estimate costs and values coin-
cide with the traditional principle of capital budgeting
that is based on discounted cash flows (DCF) analy-
sis. When dealing with numerous options associated
with product family design, the DCF approach tends
to underestimate the upside potentials to a design pro-
ject from management flexibility (Kogut & Kulatilaka,
1994). Real options have been applied to value specific
aspects of product development, such as design modu-
larity (Baldwin & Clark, 2000). Otto et al. (2003) explore
the real options concept for determining proper levels of
independent product architectural attributes. Jiao et al.
(2005a) apply a real options framework to flexibility val-
uation of a product family architecture. Banerjee and de
Weck (2004) propose a flexible product option valuation
framework to evaluate the conditions where a flexible
architecture is no longer financially viable vis-à-vis fixed
architectures. The rationale of combining technologi-
cal and business decisions in real options valuation for
optimal design decisions is supported by Georgiopoulos
et al. (2002). Jiao et al. (2005a) propose a hybrid real
options model considering the value of flexibility either
inherent in a product family design project or that can
be built in product platforms.
(6) Platform-related Metrics. Meyer and Lehnerd
(1997) develop two platform related measures, named
platform efficiency and platform effectiveness, for eval-
uating the performance of product families. Focusing
on the generational aspect of product platforms, Mar-
tin and Ishii (2002) develop two indices, called Gener-
ational Variety Index and Coupling Index, to measure
a product’s architecture. Dahamus et al. (2001) propose
to architect a portfolio of products by exploiting com-
monality and reusing modules across the family of prod-
ucts, rather than a fixed product platform upon which
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
derivative products are created. That is, the platform
itself allows for several possible sizes and types. Fellini
et al. (2002b) introduce a metric, called Sharing Penalty
Vector, to the optimal selection of product platforms
for family products with mild variation. Messac et al.
(2002b) introduce a Product Family Penalty Function to
promote platform commonality during product family
optimization. De Weck et al. (2003) adopt a market seg-
ment model using the sales volume, the price and the
competing product alternatives for product family and
platform portfolio optimization. Jiao & Tseng (2004)
develop a design customizability index and a process
customizability index for evaluating the cost effective-
ness of a design to be customized in order to meet indi-
vidual customer needs. Zha et al. (2004) introduce two
metrics, market efficiency and investment efficiency, to
the evaluation and selection of product design for mass
customization.
Product family modeling
Baldwin & Clark (2000) develop a discipline-indepen-
dent data model to provide constructs for modeling
products with optional contents. Felfernig, Friedrich,
and Jannach (2001) apply the unified modeling language
to the modeling of configuration knowledge bases for
mass customizable products. The initiative of Product
Family Classification Tree emphasizes the classification
of end-products and/or modules from a functional view-
point (Bei & MacCallum, 1995). To facilitate repre-
sentations from multiple perspectives, Generic Product
Modeling is advocated to represent product families
from both commercial and assembly views (Wortmann
et al., 1997). McKay et al. (1996) describe product fam-
ilies from both sales/customer and assembly views by
incorporating descriptions of detailed product data into
specifications of product variety. Siddique and Rosen
(1999) develop a graph grammar approach to product
platform design. Du et al. 2002a (2002a) apply graph
grammars to product family modeling. A graph rewrit-
ing system is developed to support product family con-
figuration design (Du, Jiao, & Tseng, 2002b). Set-based
model is an attempt to the formal representation of
product platform design and manufacturing processes
(Finch, 1999). Männistö (2000) studies the conceptual
modeling of product families, with particular empha-
sis on the problems related to the evolution of product
family descriptions and the product individuals created
according to them.
van Wie et al. (2003) consider product architecture
representation as organizing a deluge of information in
terms of both function and form. To model product fam-
ily configuration, Zhang et al. (2005) propose to orga-
15
nize and manage product knowledge through a knowl-
edge component that includes configuration rules and
constraints. Bohm and Stone (2004) investigate the rep-
resentation of functionality for supporting reuse. Shar-
man and Yassine (2004) study some forms of abstraction
for describing product architectures, including DSM,
molecular diagrams, and visibility-dependency signature
diagrams. Costa and Young (2001) introduce a prod-
uct range model (i.e., product families) for information
modeling of variant and adaptive design. Tiihonen et
al. (1998) develop a method of managing and model-
ing a product family as a configurable product, which
is based on the conceptualization of components, attri-
butes, resources, ports, contexts, functions and
constraints. Jiao et al. (1998) observe different data
types underlying product families that involve product-
to-product, product-to-family and family-to-family rela-
tionships. To characterize variety and its derivation, Jiao
et al. (2000) propose a generic variety structure consist-
ing of common product structures, variety parameters,
and configuration constraints.
Shooter et al. (2005) develop an information man-
agement infrastructure for product family planning and
platform customization. Corbett & Rosen (2004) develop
computational methods for modeling and combining
multiple design spaces so that product family configu-
rations can be identified while satisfying all constraints.
To articulate design of modular product architectures,
Rosen (1996) considers three design spaces in terms of
material compatibility, connections and covers. Schwarze
(1996) studies the fundamental problems of configur-
ing multiple-variant products with emphasis on con-
figuration information modeling. Johannesson (1992)
attempts to build computer-based parametric product
family models. Computer supported product platform
models are proposed by Claesson, Johannesson, and
Gedell (2001). The work of Sivard (2000) emanates from
axiomatic design and the ISO standard STEP AP214
with the purpose of improving computer representation
of information that concerns product families and prod-
uct platforms. Johannesson and Claesson (2005) report
a combined function-means and parametric modeling
approach to product platform design. Their concepts are
being deployed by Saab Automobile as the next logical
evolution of product description systems.
Product family design support systems
Kusiak and Huang (1996) and O’Grady and Liang (1998)
put forth design with modules that centers around mod-
ule selection. Liang and O’Grady (2000) focus on a
particular design environment where modules may be
available from one or more geographically dispersed
16
sources, and where data concerning the modules may be
in a multitude of databases scattered across the globe.
Huang and Liang (2001) develop formalism for design
with modules, such that customer requirements are met
using modules from suppliers geographically separated
through diverse computer platforms.
Siddique and Rosen (2001) develop a product family
configuration reasoning system to identify common plat-
forms from a collection of similar existing products, as
well as to generate product families from these common
platforms. Siddique and Boddu (2004) propose an infor-
mation framework of integrating customers into config-
uration design using a graph grammar and templates for
modules. Zha et al. (2004) examine the development of a
knowledge-intensive support scheme and a comprehen-
sive fuzzy clustering and ranking methodology for prod-
uct family design evaluation. Forza and Salvador (2002)
investigate how product configuration systems support
the order acquisition and fulfillment process in a high
product variety environment. Huang (2004) develops
an agent-based knowledge management system for deci-
sion support of modular product collaborative design.
Online product configurators have recently received
much attention to enable customers to interactively
specify and adapt a product according to their individ-
ual preferences (Sabin & Weigel, 1998). Bramham and
MacCarthy (2003) examine the empirical evidence of
available configurators in terms of matching configura-
tor attributes against business strategies. Hvam (2004)
reviews the design and implementation of product con-
figuration systems from the viewpoint of industrial
applications. Simpson et al. (2003) investigate the frame-
works for web-based platform customization. Common
configuration systems for product families necessitate
product specific knowledge and often overstrain cus-
tomers (Blecker et al., 2004a). Advisory systems are thus
advocated to guide customers according to their profile
and requirements through a personalized configuration
process ending with the generation of product vari-
ants that better fulfill the real customer needs (Blecker,
Abdelkafi, Kreutler, & Friedrich, 2004b). Blecker et al.
(2004a) present a multi-agent based design for the con-
figuration process of product variety. Ardissono et al.
(2003) report on an EU-funded project, CAWICOMS
Workbench, which aims at next generation web-based
applications that support distributed configuration of
products and services within a supply chain.
Manufacturing and production for product families
While seeking technical solutions is the major concern in
design, it is at the production stage that product costs are
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
actually committed and product quality and lead times
are determined per se. For a given design, the actual cost
depends on how the production is planned and to what
extent the economy of scale can be realized within the
existing manufacturing capabilities. This implies that the
claimed rationale of product family design can only be
fulfilled at the production stage (Jiao & Tseng, 2004).
The direct consequence of product customization on
production is observed as an exponentially increased
number of process variations (referred to as process
variety), such as diverse machines, tools, fixtures, set-
ups, cycle times, and labor (Wortmann et al., 1997).
Process variety is embedded as a set of generic items,
each of which instantiates some similar items of the
same type, in addition to various constraints regarding
re-sequencing of operations processes (namely process
structural changes). Process variety introduces signifi-
cant constraints to production planning and control,
e.g., preventing make-to-order systems from achieving
cost-effective customization capabilities (Kolisch, 2000).
Regardless of the negative impact of process variety, the
common components and the same basic product struc-
ture assumed by the customized products in a family
inherently enable similarity in the corresponding pro-
duction processes (Martinez, Favrel, & Fhodous, 2000).
Similar to a product family, a process family comprises a
set of similar production processes that share a common
process structure (referred to as a process platform).
Consequently, companies are interested in configuring
existing operations and manufacturing processes (termed
as production configuration) by exploiting similarity
among product and process families so as to take advan-
tage of repetitions (Schierholt, 2001). Besides leveraging
the cost of delivering variety, exploiting process families
around process platforms can reduce development risks
by reusing proven elements in a firm’s activities (Sawh-
ney, 1998).
Managing process variety
Ahmad and Schroeder (2002) observe that, when a firm’s
product structures or product mixes change, its process
structure should also be changed to balance flexibility
and efficiency. The traditional approach to deal with a
large number of variants associated with product fami-
lies is to treat each product as an individual bill-of-mate-
rials (BOM), which however leads to a data explosion
problem (Olsen & Stre, 1996). To overcome the limi-
tations of traditional BOMs in handling a large num-
ber of variants, the generic BOM (GBOM) concept is
developed by van Veen (1992). The GBOM defines a
generic product as a set of variants that can be iden-
tified through specifying alternative values for a set of
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
parameters (Hegge & Wortmann, 1991). The generic
bill-of-materials-and-operations is put forth by Jiao et
al. (2000) by unifying BOMs and routings to accom-
modate large numbers of product and process variants.
For multiproduct and multiprocess production systems,
Aydiny and Gugor (2005) develop a relational database
approach to generating BOMs and executing MRP.
Focusing on reducing subassembly proliferation and
the cost of offering product variety, Gupta and Krishnan
(1998) propose a methodology for designing product
family-based assembly sequences. De Lit and Delcham-
bre (2003) put forward the integrated design of product
families and the corresponding assembly systems. He
and Kusiak (1996) discuss the design of assembly sys-
tems for modular products by dividing an assembly line
into the basic and variant subassembly lines, such that
the basic subassembly line is used for common and basic
operations, whereas the variant ones for variant opera-
tions. Fujimoto and Ahmed (2003) investigate assembly
process design for handling variety with focus on how
to manage product and process-based manufacturing
complexities of an entire product family. Klocke et al.
(2000) develop systematic methods for product-related
modular process design at different production planning
and optimization phases. Lee and Tang (1998) develop
a model for evaluating the costs and benefits associated
with a situation in which the product differentiation can
be delayed through product and process redesign.
Process platform
Meyer and Lehnerd (1997) expand the common defini-
tion of a platform to include possible commonality in
processes and production. In particular from the pro-
duction and assembly perspectives, a platform implies
a focus on commonality of production tools, machines
and assembly lines (Sanchez, 1994). As a consequence,
some companies in the automotive industry have con-
sidered it more interesting to define a platform on a
manufacturing-assembly basis rather than on a product
development basis, so as to better exploit commonality
among production process (Wilhelm, 1997).
The benefit of designing product families comes from
a reduction of components in inventory and compo-
nent handling, reduction of component types and man-
ufacturing processes, and increased production volumes
(Fisher et al., 1999). However, sharing components in
a product family may lead to a lack of distinctiveness,
and shared components in one product often exceed the
requirements of other products, which causes additional
production costs (Krishnan & Gupta, 2001). Nobelius
and Sundgren (2002) point out that the potential mana-
gerial difficulties associated with the part sharing process
17
involve organizational, strategic, technology and cost
related issues. Tsubon eet al. (1994) study the relation-
ship between component part commonality and manu-
facturing flexibility. Siddique, Rosen, and Wang (1998)
and Wilhelm (1997) demonstrate that the level in the
product hierarchy at which commonality is pursued var-
ies with respect to the deployment of production pro-
cesses.
Kusiak (2002) examines the integration of modular-
ity in terms of products, processes, and resources. Sako
and Murray (2000) present a holistic view of modularity
in design, production and use within the context of the
global automotive industry. The impact of product mod-
ularity on the design for assembly and product life cycles
is discussed in He and Kusiak (1996) and Newcomb et al.
(1996). Bi and Zhang (2001) present taxonomy on mod-
ularity technologies with applications to manufacturing.
Salvador et al. (2002) explore how manufacturing char-
acteristics affect the appropriate type of modularity to
be embedded into a product family architecture.
Meyer and Dalal (2001) study the management of
platform architectures along with manufacturing pro-
cesses. The concept of a process platform is introduced
by Jiao et al. (2003) for product and process variety
management. To support computerized process deriva-
tion, the group technology is applied to construct coding
schemes for representing process variations in relation
to product variants (Jiao, Zhang, & Pokharel, 2005c).
Romanowski and Nagi (2002) combine the data-mining
and graph-theoretic approaches in order to generate
generic BOMs incorporated with design and manufac-
turing information. To construct a process platform, Jiao
et al. (2005b) employ the text mining and graph match-
ing techniques to identify generic routings from large
amount of production information and process data.
Further to coordinate product and process variety, Jiao
et al. (2005b) adopt the association rule mining tech-
nique to identify the interrelationships between product
variants and process variations.
Production configuration
Stobaugh and Telesio (1983) represent early efforts to
develop configuration models for manufacturing. They
purport to boil the manufacturing task list down to
a few “generic tasks” and then address major deci-
sions through “choices within each type”. Hill (1994)
describes five generic process types across 25 dimen-
sions with an intention to capture product and market
requirements, manufacturing characteristics, investment
and cost issues, and infrastructure choices. Hayes and
Wheelwright (1984) develop a product–process matrix
to address internal fit at the process choice level.
18
Bozarth and McDermott (1998) examine the configura-
tion research in the broad area of manufacturing strat-
egies and conclude that configuration models are well
suited to studying complex multivariate organizational
phenomena.
Schierholt (2001) presents the concept of process con-
figuration that combines the principles of product con-
figuration and process planning. In accordance with a
given product family, a process family, consisting of a set
of process variants, is concerned with the fulfillment of
all product variants in the family. Commonality across
the variety of product variants leads to a number of same
or similar operations, processes and sequences among
process variants (Schierholt, 2001). In reality a domi-
nant flow direction usually presents in a general flow
shop (Oosterman, Land, & Gaalman, 2000). Therefore,
a common product structure and a common process
structure exist within a product family, and variety is
embodied in different variants (instances) of these com-
mon structures.
To support production configuration, Jiao, Zhang,
and Prasanna (2005d) study the modeling of process
variety using object-oriented Petri-Nets with change-
able structures. Siddique (2005) develops a method to
explicitly consider existing assembly plant configuration
and resources during selection of assembly processes for
new product family members. Molina et al. (2005) argue
that the next generation manufacturing systems must
be able to provide increased levels of flexibility, recon-
figurability and intelligence to allow them to respond to
product variety. Mehrabi, Ulsoy, and Koren (2000) envi-
sion reconfigurable manufacturing systems as a new par-
adigm in manufacturing, in which it is possible for rapid
adjustment of production capacity and functionality in
response to increased variety of products. Benjaafar,
Heragu, and Irani (2002) discuss the flexible, modular
and reconfigure layout configurations for meeting the
needs of multiproduct enterprises.
Supply chain issues of product families
Customer requirements for flexibility, agility, cost
efficiency and product variety force companies to recon-
figure their supply chains and to focus more on collab-
oration with external partners (Salvador et al., 2002).
The design of a supply chain has an essential influ-
ence on how a manufacturer of complex products orga-
nizes and coordinates the stream of innovative products
through platform and architectural design strategies vis-
à-vis the sourcing, manufacturing and distribution strat-
egies (Mikkola & Skjøtt-Larsen, 2004). Rungtusanatham
& Forza (2005) advocate to coordinate the product,
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
process and supply chain design decisions. Fine et al.
(2005) purport to expand traditional concurrent engi-
neering to three dimensions, namely 3D-CE, in terms
of products, processes, and the supply chain. He argues
that all three domains possess certain architectures, and
thus simultaneously considering these architectures is
the key to accommodate low volume, large variety, and
high-speed operations. Jiao, Huang, and Tseng (2004)
discuss concurrent enterprising for mass customization,
which aims to align customers, products, processes, and
logistics for delivering an increasing product variety with
reasonable costs. McKay and Pennington (2001) provide
an operational level framework for modeling products,
processes and supply chains. Fixson (2005) utilizes the
product architecture as a coordination mechanism for
decision-making across the product, manufacturing pro-
cess, and supply chain domains. Garg (1999) develops a
supply chain modeling and analysis tool for designing
products and processes within a supply chain frame-
work. Singhal and Singhal (2002) present a compatibil-
ity matrix for identifying desirable product ideas with
consideration of operations and marketing capabilities,
along with the supply chain, the product and the pro-
cesses used to manufacture the product.
Sourcing/outsourcing
Salvador et al. (2002) investigate multiple companies
and their product groups and find that the chosen type
and degree of product modularity have implications on
where to source components. Appelqvist and Heikkilä
(2003) propose a model for product, process, and sup-
ply chain configuration in a build-to-order environment.
They argue that product standardization makes it pos-
sible to move the order penetration point downstream,
whilst downstream order penetration makes it possi-
ble to effectively differentiate by providing fast, flexible
deliveries to customers. Momme, Moeller, and Hvolby
(2000) observe that the level of modularity affects a
firm’s sourcing strategy—outsourcing commodity items
while keeping components of strategic relevance in-
house. Chakravarty and Balakrishnan (2001) analyze
the minimum number of module options that are req-
uired for a desired amount of variety.
Dahmus and Otto (2001) observe that the more the
product architecture enables late customization, i.e.,
postponement, the more it can contribute to savings
in inventory and work-in-process costs. This also sug-
gests that the use of common components allows
inventory levels to be lowered through risk pooling
(Gerchak, Magazine, and Gamble, 1988). From a sup-
ply chain perspective, risk pooling is one of the most
noticeable effects of product platforms and component
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
commonality across product families. Gupta and Krish-
nan (1999) study component sharing with multiple com-
ponent types when considering the economy of scale in
procuring one unique component type instead of multi-
ple component types from a single supplier. Their find-
ings coincide with the wisdom of reducing complexity of
a product family through product design by leveraging
common characteristics among the products within the
family.
Collier (1981) identifies part commonality as a way
to reduce the safety stock level for a given service level.
Baker, Magazine, and Nuttle (1986) show that the safety
stock of unique components increases if a certain service
level is to be maintained, while the stock for a common
part may be lower compared with the unique parts it
replaces. Gerchak, Magazine, and Gamble (1988) draw
similar conclusions for an arbitrary number of prod-
ucts as long as the costs of the product-specific com-
ponents that are replaced by a common one are the
same. Furthermore, product architectures can reduce
increased demand volatility from upstream, i.e., the bull-
whip-effect, if they allow for parallelization of produc-
tion to achieve short lead times (Perera, Nagarur, &
Tabucanon, 1999).
With focus on the automotive industry, Fredriksson
(2002) analyzes the influence of organizational forms on
the outsourcing decision of modular assembly units in
relation to product modularity. Takeishi and Fujimoto
(2003) study the impact of modularization on the prod-
uct, production and supplier systems in the car industry.
A number of studies have emphasized on the synchroni-
zation of supply chain management and product design
decisions (Lee & Sasser, 1995). Such recognitions are
consistent with the trend towards outsourcing both man-
ufacturing activities and design activities (McCarthy &
Anagnostou, 2004), as well as the importance of sup-
plier involvement in product development (McIvor &
Humphreys, 2004). Petersen, Handfield, and Ragatz
(2005) argue that integrating suppliers into the prod-
uct development process has direct impact on manu-
facturing process design decisions and on supply chain
configuration decisions.
Decoupling/postponement
Product family development implies a make-to-order or
assemble-to-order production, which means decoupling
and delaying certain stages of product fulfillment. The
postponement strategy means that some of the activities
in the supply chain, may it be production, assembly, or
even design, are not performed until customer orders are
received (van Hoek, 2001). Feitzinger and Lee (1997)
stress that postponement is about delaying the timing of
19
crucial processes, through which end products embody
specific functional features. This implies to decouple the
fulfillment process into standardized and customer spe-
cific parts. Design for postponement has been put forth
in line with the product architecture and modularity
principles (Lee & Billington, 1994).
Lee and Tang (1998) point out that product modular-
ity affects the extent to which strategies for postpone-
ment and late customization can be realized, and thus
maximizing the benefits from a postponement strategy
may require re-sequencing of processes. Pagh and Coo-
per (1998) distinguish between manufacturing, logis-
tics and full postponement. Zinn and Bowersox (1988)
label two types of postponement. Time postponement
refers to postponement of the delivery of the prod-
ucts until the customer orders arrive. Form postpone-
ment means delaying the differentiation of the products
to later stages of the supply chain. While the former
excels in meeting the increased customized demands
with lower inventory levels, the latter improves the lead-
time performance. Su, Chang, and Ferguson (2005) eval-
uate the time postponement and form postponement
strategies for implementing large product variety. They
argue that the time postponement structure maps to
a make-to-order supply chain, whereas the form post-
ponement supply chain structure fits into a hybrid make-
to-stock and make-to-order environment, which are
dedicated to common components and customized prod-
uct offerings, respectively.
Resource allocation
In a networked manufacturing supply chain, allocat-
ing proper production volumes to various manufactur-
ing sites is a complex task involving diverse markets,
product families, manufacturing capabilities, as well as
final-production and sub-assembly supplies. Based on
product family principles, Ng and Jiao (2004) study the
tradeoffs of resource utilization, inventory volumes and
work-in-process levels. To support resource allocation
across product, process, and supply chain configura-
tions, Blackhurst, Wu, and O’Grady (2005) develop a
network-based product chain decision model for describ-
ing supply chain operations. Huang et al. (2005) recog-
nize the issue of sharing manufacturing resources and
supply sources by exploiting common components and
modular product structure to be shared across the indi-
vidual products. Chong, Ho, and Tang (1998) point out
that product proliferation and variety lead to increased
supply chain complexity, unacceptably high production
and inventory costs, as well as long time to market.
Thonemann and Bradley (2002) investigate the impact
of product variety on supply chain performance. They
20
determine that product variety has significant effect on
supply chain lead time especially when setup times are
significant; therefore, it becomes imperative to adjust
the decision variables and parameters related to manu-
facturing processes and supply chains in order to improve
performance under high product variety.
Supply chain configuration
According to demand chain management principles, the
preferences of end customers should be the basis for
configuring supply chains (Lee & Sasser, 1995). Park,
Ghosh, and Murthy (2000) present a comprehensive
model for integrated product platform and global sup-
ply chain configuration. Huang et al. (2005) analyze the
impact of platform products, with and without common-
ality, on decisions pertaining to supply chain configura-
tion and the consequent performance of the configured
supply chain. Kim, Leung, Park, Zhang, and Lee (2002)
develop a mathematical model and a solution algorithm
to assist the manufacturer in configuring its supply chain
for a mix of multiple products sharing some common raw
materials and/or component parts.
Based on the concept of ontology-oriented constraint
networks, Novak and Eppinger (2001) find statistically
significant relations between supply chain structures and
product architectures for luxury and high-performance
vehicles. Choi and Hong (2002) classify supply chains
according to formalization, centralization and complex-
ity, and thus suggest that integral supply chains tend to
be characterized by high levels in all three dimensions.
Fine et al. (2005) conjecture that integral products would
ideally be built by integral supply chains, whilst modu-
lar products tend to be produced by modular supply
chains. Based on examination of the automotive indus-
try, Doran (2003) infers that the general shift toward
more modular product designs in that industry forces
suppliers to reevaluate their strategies. As a result, many
would-be first-tier suppliers must now position them-
selves as value-added second-tier suppliers, in order to
fit with the more flexible characteristics of the emerging
modular supply chains.
Prospects for future research
As witnessed in this comprehensive review, product fam-
ily design and development has been tackled from a
broad scope of product fulfillment, including both front-
end and back-end issues. Owing to the flurry of var-
ious research efforts, this emerging field of research
has matured rapidly in the past decade (Simpson, 2004;
Simpson et al., 2005). From a holistic view, there is still
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
much to be desired in order to achieve system-wide
solutions for product family design and platform-based
product development. In this regard, the following areas
are suggested as the avenue for further research efforts.
Customer integration for product families
The driving force behind product family design and
development is the enterprises’ positioning of custom-
ers at the center of value creation and involving cus-
tomers into the product fulfillment process. Of primary
importance in product families is the interaction with
customers (Blecker et al., 2004a). On the technical side,
designers have always assumed that customers’ satis-
faction with the designed product is sufficiently high as
long as the product meets the prescribed technical speci-
fications; however, what customers appreciate is not the
enhancement of the solution capability but the func-
tionality of the product. This means that the traditional
dimensions of customer satisfaction may deserve scru-
tiny, for example, identifying those product character-
istics that cause different degrees of satisfaction among
customers; understanding the interrelation between the
buying process and product satisfaction; determining the
optimal amount of customization and customer inte-
gration; explaining the key factors regarding the value
perception of customers; and justifying an appropriate
number of choices from the customers’ perspective.
Equally important are customers’ decision-making
processes when interacting with product families and in
turn developing proper fulfillment capabilities. At the
end providing decision support to customers is deemed
to be important. This coincides with consumer behaviors
in business systems based on customer involvement in
the product customization process (Huffman & Kahn,
1998). While most product family-based customization
approaches implemented in practice are based on offer-
ing a huge number of variety and choices, the perception
of choice and the joy or burden of configuration experi-
enced by customers are not well understood. Many ques-
tions are pending. For example, what are the incentives
for integrating customers into value creation? What fac-
tors drive customers to interact with a configurator?
How many variants should be explored and changed
before making a final decision? Are there any specific
patterns that customers follow when interacting with a
product family design system? And how do different lev-
els of the decoupling point (i.e., where the customer is
integrated into value creation) influence customer inte-
gration and how does this affect the performance of a
product customization system? Toward this end, prod-
uct family development needs to be incorporated with
more marketing engineering decisions (Michalek et al.,
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
2005), as well as customer perceptions (Blecker et al.,
2004b).
Product family design support
Product family-based customization has often been
enacted as an “after thought” from the manufacturer’s
point of view, and thereby only limited options are per-
ceived by the customers. The prevailing principle is a
two-stage process of product development. While prod-
uct architectures and the range of possible variety are
determined a priori during a product family architect-
ing stage, a subsequent design and development stage
takes place in close interaction between the customers
and the manufacturer. Based on what has been learned
from the second stage, the product family architecture
and platform may be redesigned or upgraded, which
in turn leads to capability enhancement on the manu-
facturer side. One of the important research topics is
product architecture and platform modeling. Compar-
ing with numerous efforts in product family optimiza-
tion design, this field however has so far received least
attention and little achievement has been reported (Cor-
bett & Rosen, 2004). It is imperative to call for rigorous
research that synthesizes useful ingredients from those
establishments in the artificial intelligence field such as
configuration topology, software product families, and
architectural modeling.
Although the basic principles of product family design
are understood and well documented in the literature,
quite a few fundamental issues require further exami-
nation. Some pending issues include, for example, the
difference of customer-perceived variety from techni-
cal variety in fulfillment, the optimal degree of product
differentiation, the mechanisms of interrelation between
modularity and commonality, implications of adaptabil-
ity, flexibility, reusability and customizability, product
family configuration models and decision support, the
coherence among the product architecture, family, and
platform, and so on. Further issues may consider, for
instance, to what extent a product family architecture
and platform can best represent the capability of an
enterprise? How can product families be matched with
an existing set of resources and enterprise capabilities?
How can various players (customers, designers, suppli-
ers, production engineers, etc.) communicate well within
the same platform of product family design? How to
evolve product platforms and architectures in accor-
dance with changes in customers’ requirements, product
technologies and enterprise capabilities? How to coor-
dinate basic product designs with variant design of the
configuration process? Last but not least, what are the
key factors that contribute to design-by-customer with
21
the support of product families and e-commerce tech-
nologies?
Manufacturing and logistics issues
The premise of product family design and platform-
based product development relies on the belief that
flexible manufacturing systems along with scalable and
modular product structures can significantly reduce the
fixed cost in comparison with the variable cost, allow-
ing variety to be provided without incurring significant
cost increases. Nonetheless, flexible manufacturing and
the corresponding planning systems are necessary but
insufficient for successful implementation of product
families. These systems have to be supplemented by
information technologies capable of handling the infor-
mation flows and transaction costs involved in the ful-
fillment of product families. The advent of pervasive
connectivity by the Internet provides the necessary and
affordable connections among all parties in a product
family-based customization system. As a result, the suc-
cessful implementation of product families depends on
the extension of concurrent engineering beyond the
traditional boundary of design and manufacturing to
include customer interaction, marketing, service and
recovery. It has been suggested that concurrent enter-
prising is very much in line with the idea of the real-
time economy where the customers are central to the
value creation (Prasad, 1998). More research efforts are
expected for building up rigorous frameworks of recon-
figurable processes and process platforms, integrated
information management for product and process fam-
ilies, coordination of product and process variety, etc.
Another important aspect is for the enterprise to cre-
ate capabilities with dynamic stability that enable the
firm to adapt, integrate, and reconfigure the manufac-
turing skills and competences so as to react more suffi-
ciently to new customers’ requirements or to adapt to
a changing business environment. Substantial research
is needed to transfer the tools and principles from this
area to an enterprise that is no longer based on the
manufacturing of products but on interactions with each
individual customer. It is necessary to establish method-
ologies for describing capabilities and sharing them in
an extended value chain network. For example, how
can modular process models be created and configured
in order to integrate the capabilities of different firms
in the fulfillment process of a specific customer order?
The idea of inter-organizational cooperation and vir-
tual enterprises has to be developed much further. The
benefits of integrating suppliers into customized manu-
facturing and capability development are well described
in theory, but not well implemented in practice. Further
22
research is needed to establish scalable and transfer-
able coordination schemes in the logistics domain as
well. Besides, the tradeoff of delayed satisfaction and
increase in volume efficiency is obvious from the manu-
facturer perspective, but it may not be the case for cus-
tomers. This leads to the justification of the congruence
of customer specifications and manufacturing capabili-
ties, for example, to explain how major ERP suites (e.g.
SAP, Baan, J.D. Edwards, etc.) affect operational perfor-
mances when implementing product families (Medina &
Duffy, 1998).
Economic justification
Product family design and development is associated
with new cost and profit structures that can be coined as
“economies of scale and scope”. Current research on the
economic and performance evaluation of product fami-
lies is dominated by empirical studies, ad hoc samples, or
broad approaches based on cost accounting. Traditional
cost accounting by allocating fixed costs and variable
costs across multiple products may produce distorted
cost-carrying figures due to possible sunk costs associ-
ated with investment into product and process platforms
(Jiao & Zhang, 2005). It is quite common in product
family fulfillment that design and manufacturing admit
resources, and thus the related costs, to be shared among
multiple products in a reconfigurable fashion, as well as
per-product fixed costs (Moore et al., 1999). Yano and
Dobson (1998) observe a number of industrial settings,
where a wide range of products are produced with very
little incremental costs per se, or very high develop-
ment costs are shared across broad product families, or
fixed costs and variable costs change dramatically with
product variety. They point out that “the accounting sys-
tems, whether traditional or activity-based, do not sup-
port the separation of various cost elements”. Safizadeh,
Ritzman, and Mallick (2000) derive similar results from
an empirical study of 142 manufacturing plants: plants
that provide a high degree of customization incurs high
cost structures. However, when controlling for produc-
tion processes the tradeoff disappears. This means once
a company has defined its product range along with an
appropriate production process, product family-based
customization that falls within the range offered does
not cost any extra.
The economic justification of product families req-
uires the identification of proper measures and perfor-
mance indicators to characterize different outcomes of
a product customization system. This task is imperative
because the current accounting systems are not designed
for assessing the true economical benefits from the total
value chain point of view. Even if the focus is shifted
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
from cost control to value creation, existing account-
ing and control systems are mostly dominated by the
practice of product costing. Savings and additional costs
resulting from different degrees of interaction with the
customers are not covered by most industrial accounting
systems. Activity-based costing and the balanced score
card approaches may provide initial solutions; however,
approved ratios for calculating the value of customer
relationships are still missing; nor are parameters for
evaluating the extent of the market research informa-
tion gained by aggregated customer knowledge. More-
over, the value contribution of product families should
be evaluated from the customers’ perspective. There is
rarely any attempt to explicitly measure the need for
individualization or to quantify the value of product
families from a customers’ perspective. The issue of jus-
tifying the economic value of introducing individualized
products is of vital importance. Only if the increment in
the customer-perceived value or utility suffices enough
can product customization become a mass phenome-
non. Recent study on the valuation of flexibility has
suggested that the real option approach surmounts tra-
ditional DCF analysis-based methods that tend to ignore
the upside potentials from management flexibility (Jiao
et al., 2005a; Otto et al., 2003).
Furthermore, the risks related to product family deve-
lopment need to be addressed properly. Robertson and
Ulrich (1998) observe the organizational risks related to
platform development. Developing product platforms in
most cases requires more investments and development
time than developing a single product, which may delay
the time to market and affect the return on investment
time. Meyer and Lehnerd (1997) point out such risks that
weak common platform may undermine the competi-
tiveness of the entire product line and therefore a broad
array of products may feel the pain. In addition to fixed
investments, developing platforms may result in over-
design of low-end product variants in order to enable
reuse with high-end products (Krishnan & Gupta, 2001).
Henderson and Clark (1990) identify one potential neg-
ative effect of modular product architectures that origi-
nates from the risk of creating barriers to architectural
innovation. Organizational forces may also hinder the
ability to balance commonality and distinctiveness (Hal-
man, Hofer, & van Wuuren, 2003).
Extended platforms for collaborative product families
Product family design and development enhances profit-
ability through a synergy of increased customer-per-
ceived value and cost reduction in design, manufacturing
and the supply chain. In line with the holistic view shown
in Figure 1, a product family should ideally be built on
J Intell Manuf (2007) 18:5–29
sharing a multidimensional core of assets such as stan-
dardized components, manufacturing, supply and dis-
tribution processes, customer segmentation and brand
positioning (Jiao, Huang, and Tseng, 2004). To sup-
port coordination of the demand and supply chains with
product families, it is necessary to extend platform think-
ing to the entire continuum of product fulfillment, inclu-
ding customer platforms, brand platforms, product plat-
forms, process platforms, and global platforms (Halman
et al., 2003). Greater complexity must be introduced to
product family design decisions when considering more
decision variables or parameters pertinent to the coor-
dination across the product, manufacturing process and
supply chain domains (Rungtusanatham & Forza, 2005).
It is also important to incorporate the pervasive con-
nectivity of the Internet to coordinate the participation
of all parties including customers, suppliers, service pro-
viders and many others. While the Internet facilitates
a company’s communication with its customers to con-
figure its products and even offer online transactions,
the manufacturers must implement such web-based
solutions to allow them to interactively communicate
information related to product design, development,
manufacturing, and logistics within their own infrastruc-
tures in a coherent manner. The ultimate goal is to
achieve an F2B2C e-Commerce that aims to realize
product customization over the Internet through coher-
ently integrating manufacturing production automation
with supply chain management and sales-service sup-
port into a collaborative web of interactive commerce
(Lu, 2004).
Summary
Substantial progress has been achieved in the areas of
product family design optimization, product family con-
figuration, modular architectures, and product portfolio
planning. Future research lies in the holistic view and
system-wide solutions. More specifically, product family
design needs to incorporate more front-end issues such
as explicit customer modeling and integration, product
demand and market segmentation, along with the eco-
nomic evaluation of product families. In the meantime,
the spectrum of product family design should extend
to include more back-end issues involving manufactur-
ing, production, and the supply chain. The fulfillment
of product families requires alignment of the customer,
product, process and supply chain decisions. Extended
configure-to-order platforms are the core to support
product customization over the Internet while achiev-
ing a synergy of sales force automation, product design,
23
manufacturing planning, and supply chain management
within a coherent framework.
While the field of product families has matured rap-
idly over the last decade, there are still a number of rela-
tively unexplored topics that offers numerous opportu-
nities for scholarly inquiry. Despite the diligent efforts
of many scholars, much more research needs to be put
into the agenda. As discussed in this review, the unan-
swered questions may be examined through a wide vari-
ety of approaches, both theoretically and methodologi-
cally. We hope that the review will serve as a basic frame
of reference and will spur more research to examine this
important and fascinating field.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge sup-
port from the National Science Foundation under Career Award
DMI-0133923. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recom-
mendations presented in this paper are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foun-
dation.
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