Research On The Key Factors Of Product Family Architecture And Their Correlation Effect Based On Customer Perspective

Product family has become the basic unit of development and manufacturingprocess. As the most front of development processes, architecture and its relatedproblem are the key to decide product family vitality. The existing literatures forproduct family architecture mainly concentrate on the realization methods basedengineering perspective. However, the customers would pay more attention to productexperience than physical entity. Therefore, to support the products developmentdecision under the background of mass customization, and to help manufacturersreduce the risk of product family design, this paper brought the customer perspectiveto the analysis of the key factors of product family architecture, and then explored thecorrelation effects among these factors and customer satisfaction.In this paper, the qualitative research and empirical research method have beenunified. Firstly, the process of product family architecture was completed from theview of work results, and the related customer factors had been discussed. Throughdivided the architecture process into front-end and back-end, an original analysisframework would be found to study the key factors of product family architecture.Relying on this framework, the composition of key factors and the correlation amongthem had been discussed deeply using customer experience as the analysis basis. Andthen, a meticulous research of the influence from back-end factors to customersatisfaction had been completed.The main innovation points in this research reflected in the following respects.Firstly, Constructing a complete set of product family architecture process, andbrought the creative idea activities in front-end into the research category. Secondly,based on the customer perspective, the relationship among the key factors of productfamily architecture, customer demand, customer experience and customer satisfactionhad been fully considered. Lastly, it improved content levels of the product familyarchitecture, and had a careful analysis of the product line architecture.The results reveal that, the complete process of product family architectureincluded four main stages, such as idea conception, idea comparison and selection,idea optimization and idea life cycle management. In each stage, the customer’s demands should been reflect. On the front-end of architecture, firms would focus onthe creative idea to improve the innovative of product family. There are two keyfactors namely creative ponder and identify ponder. The back-end mainly devoted toform a complete terminal product family plan and the management of lifecontinuation. The key factors include the cultivation of option value, product familyrecommendation, cost control, quality control, attribute customization and servicecustomization.The correlation between key factors appeared between the front-endand the back-end, or among the back-end factors. In addition, the excellentarchitecture has a positive influence to enhance customer satisfaction which wouldfacilitate the ascension of customer loyalty. In particular, platform architecture has amain influence to customer satisfaction by the control of quality and cost. Thepositive effect is obvious for attribute and service customized to satisfy customers,however, the cultivation of option value and product family recommendation, shouldpay more attention to the preference and decision-making ability of customer.