The Interaction Mechanism Between Technical Standards And Product Modularity

In recent years, technical standards are playing an important role in leading the industry development and obtaining super profits. The standards-settings processes have competed at the national level. Technical standards play an increasingly important role in economic development, it is not only the base of modern production and management, but also helpful to promote the new science technology. Meanwhile, the concept of modular has been penetrated in management and economics domain, especially in the development of complex productions and the cooperation of organizations. After entering into the modular time, standardization organizations and modular companies began to combine for improving their competitive power and obtaining profits. Many researches indicated that there were many interactions between them, and the detailed interactions mechanism should be research much deeper.Based on the theory of modular, technical standards, network externalities and standardization industrialization, a multi-cases study is applied to analyze the interaction between standardization and modularity. Firstly, typical cases were chosen to explore the effect that technical standards have on modularity in production and enterprises. Secondly, it discussed the effect that modularity have on technical standards, and then summarized the interaction mechanism.The researches show that modular productions consolidate the dominant technical standards of industry. As the interface of modularity, technical standards can improve the efficiency of modular and shorten the research period. Beside it, it also can get the network externalities of standards, thus locking the customers in so as to enhance the competitive. On the other hand, modular productions provide the wide base for technical standards, which contribute to the industrialization of technical standards. The improvement of the function and technology related to modularity will promote the upgrade of technical standards. The network value of modular can also be helpful to form alliance, thus allowing companies to attain advantages in standards-settings.