Product Family Design Method Based On Customer Value Analysis

The driving force behind product family design and development is the enterprises’positioning of customers at the center of value creation. What customers really need is also value. However, the research of product family design based on customer value just starts now within a limited domain and without systematic approaches. To fill this research blank, this dissertation proposes a systematic theory and method on product family design within the context of customer value analysis. The main research work is as follows.(1) The theory framework is set up on how to design product family within the context of customer value analysis.Product family design and development essentially entails a conceptual structure and overall logical organization of generating a family of products. In order to make this research more systematic and rational, the theory framework is first set up on how to design product family within the context of customer value. Firstly, some cenceptive problems are solved on how to integrate the factors of customer valve into the decision process of product family design, involving how to interprete the fundmental issue of product family design within the context of customer value analysis and how to measure and analyze customer value for product family design. Secondly, it is studied on how to model product family design within the context of customer value analysis, involving modeling framework, modeling conception and modeling procedure.(2) The systematic method is studied on how to measure the variety of customers’ needs.The real goal of product family strategy is not for variety but for providing for the target market a right product portfolio with maximum customer value and the success of product family strategy lies in how to understand and capture the variety of customers’ needs firstly. Therefore, method on how to measure the variety of customers’ needs is studied as an important topic and served as the starting point of product family generation and expansion. The method is mainly based the organic integration of Conjoint Analysis and Quality Function Deployment to capture the information of the variety of customers’needs and translate it into decision supporting data.(3) The method is studied on how to design modular product family based on customer value analysis.Based on the set-up theory framework, this dissertation studies the design method of modular product family. The method presented is explored maily through sensitivity analysis which helps to quantify the cascading mappings between customers’ requirements, functional requirements, design parameters and process variables. Based on analyzing customers’ needs, the product platform characteristics are identified by using the sensitivity analysis results which integrate various information from all the design domains. By way of illustration, a family of sedan is designed and its results demonstrate the effectiveness and practical value of the method.(4) The method is studied on how to design scalble product family based on customer value analysis.Based on the set-up theory framework, this dissertation studies the design method of scalble product family. By utilizing the optimizing design results both from maximizing the commonality of the product family and designing the product variant individually, some valuable information is obtained to facilitate realizing the tradeoff between the commonality and the performance loss. Based on this, a multi-stage method is set up offering opportunities to overcome the inherent difficulties for formulating and computing the product family design problem. By way of illustration, a family of universal electric motors is designed and its results demonstrate the effectiveness and practical value of the method.(5) The problem of product family expansion is studied within the context of customer value analysis.The first step of product family strategy is developing product family solution and the second step is proceedingly developing new more variants based on the set-up platform to expand the variety. The first step is called product family design and the second step is called product family espansion. The product family espansion is not only an essential stage of implementing product family strategy but also the necessity for companies to improve competing ablility. Therefore how to make right product family expansion decision is a challenging problem in the final success of product family strategy. The product family expansion problem is first described and analyzed. The concept of relative value is utilized for combing and quantifying the complex relationship between the various technical solutions to the product design and the customer value factors. And then the related information is organized effectively to model the product family expansion problem focusing on the decision goal of maximizing the total customer value in the target market. Finally, the product family expansion decision on the medium passenger cars of an automobile company is taken as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness and practical value of the method.