This paper focuses on the engineering design of modular systems in the manufacturing industry, in which companies can benefit from modular and configurable products that fulfil a variety of customer needs. The purpose of this paper is to study the types of challenges faced in the engineering design of modular systems and the types of support needed to address these challenges. The topic is studied via a literature review and seven industrial case studies. The analysis method for the case studies combines engineering and business perspectives. The engineering perspective highlights engineering concepts related to designing modular systems, while the business perspective focuses on related managerial issues. We find that the studied companies emphasised different aspects of modular system development, despite having similar high-level goals related to the benefits of modularity and design reuse. We also identify several challenges, along with the need for support related to the engineering design of modular systems in the manufacturing industry. Current engineering design practices related to modular systems are not sufficient to generate the typical benefits related to modularity and design reuse; organisations must also focus on other aspects of the design process, such as knowledge retrieval.
ARTICLE HISTORY
KEYWORDSDesign reuse; product variety management; modularity and standardisation; engineering design in industry; knowledge and information management CONTACT Jarkko Pakkanen jarkko.pakkanen@tut.fi
The paper studies what kind of support could be applied to the management of partly configurable modular systems. The main tasks of product management, product portfolio management and product variety management are defined. In addition, a partly configurable product structure and modular system are defined. Because the limited support in the literature for managing partly configurable modular systems, the article reviews previous product development cases in which authors have been involved on lessons learnt basis, i.e., if the methods and tools used in the cases could provide support for the research objective. As a result, the existing definition of the modular system should be extended by the concepts of non-module and design decision sequence description when dealing with partly configurable modular systems. This is because engineer-to-order should be made possible in cases where it brings clear added value to the customer compared to completely pre-defined solutions that may limit the customer's interest in the offering. Tools to assess the impact of changes to the product offering are required. These should be taken into account in frameworks that are used in method and tool development.
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