Equipment Manufacturing Enterprise Product Platform Upgrade

Equipment manufacturing industry is a typical technology-intensive industry. Its products are not only the foundation of the entire manufacturing industry, but also the important drive for other industries. The capability and technology level of equipment manufacturing industry directly relate to the economic development, which also represent a country's level of economy, technology and comprehensive national strength. In recent years, the development and innovation of China's equipment manufacturing industry have attracted great attention of government, companies and researchers.As an efficient tool of developing and designing, product platform has been widely used in equipment manufacturing companies. However, the study of product platform is very limited, which mainly focus on the advantage, method and process of the utilization of the platform for new product development, but not very much on the construction and upgrading of the platform. For this reason, this paper intends to study the upgrading mode, process and the factors that influence the platform upgrading. The study is based on the characteristics of the product platform of equipment manufacturing companies, and the results will provide suggestions to the future innovation and practices.Firstly, based on the theory of complex product and system (CoPS) and product platform, the paper reviews the factors and features of product platform, and suggests the factor structure model of product platform. Meanwhile, the paper defines the product platform from the dimensions of factor and product, basing on its characteristics of innovation.Secondly, the paper analyses the product platform upgrading process from the aspect of factor change and network interaction. Based on three case studies of the equipment manufacturing companies, a three-phase model is suggested and the key elements and strategies are analyzed.Then, the paper suggests three models of product platform upgrading and analyses their mechanism.Further more, the paper studies the factors that influence the product platform upgrading. Five factors are identified, and their influence on the three models is investigated. Data analysis supports the assumptions basically, which will provide guidance to the selection and implementation of the product platform upgrading models. Finally, this paper also provides suggestions to the equipment manufacturing companies, and conclusion and future study prospect as well.