Managing product families: The case of the Sony Walkman

Sanderson, Susan Walsh; Uzumeri, Mustafa

doi:10.1016/0048-7333(94)00797-b

Cited by 359 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Hence, for purposes of studying the effect of modularity on product variety, we will use this functional form to represent the fixed development costs. The concave shape of FC m matches qualitative behavior cited earlier for the Sony (Sanderson and Uzumeri 1995) and Black & Decker (Pine 1993) cases, in which modularity reduced the unit development costs of additional variants. Moreover, we will see that product variety is much more heavily determined by the degree of modularity (K) than by the cost magnitude (c f ).…”

Section: Assumption 2 the Product Development Cost Is An Increasing supporting

confidence: 51%

“…One of the most efficient tools of mass customization is modular design (Baldwin and Clark 1997). For instance, 85% of Sony's 250 new models launched during the 1980s involved only minor feature changes on cosmetic redesigns and shared many components, such as "superflat" motors and "chewing gum" batteries (Sanderson and Uzumeri 1995). See Table 1 of Sanchez (1999) for more applications of modular design.…”

Section: Introduction and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Product Line Selection and Pricing with Modularity in Design

Hopp

2005

M&SOM

125

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T his paper addresses the strategic impact of modular design on the optimal length and price of a differentiated product line. We represent consumer demand with a Bayesian logit model. We also break operations costs into product design and production components. Our analysis shows that reducing product development costs via modular design always makes it attractive to offer greater product variety. However, reducing production costs can sometimes motivate a reduction in variety for a risk-averse producer in a multiple-segment market. We also characterize the impacts of degree of modularity and production cost on price markup and market share. Finally, we show that the optimal product line length is monotonic in risk attitude and the monotonic weak majorization, partial order on product assortment.

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Section: Assumption 2 the Product Development Cost Is An Increasing supporting

confidence: 51%

Section: Introduction and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Product Line Selection and Pricing with Modularity in Design

Hopp

2005

M&SOM

125

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“…Ibuka was impressed by the quality of the sound. He had recently seen the prototype of a new set of lightweight headphones being developed by Sony's Research Laboratory (Sanderson and Uzumeri, 1995). He insisted on combining the portable stereo tape player with the new headphones.…”

Section: The Walkmanmentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of innovation: Why innovations need a godfather

Smith

2007

Technovation

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Innovation is closely linked to the development of technology. Hence it is often assumed that when an innovation fails it is the technology that is at fault. While this may be true in many instances, there are occasions when it is not the technology that is at fault, rather, it is managerial and organisational aspects that cause problems and lead to failure. Studies have shown that individuals who take on specific roles can play an important part in avoiding these problems. These roles include the technological gatekeeper, the product champion and the sponsor/coach. In addition to these roles, this paper argues that there is another, namely that of godfather. With this role a highly respected, senior figure within an organisation provides support that is critical in ensuring the project overcomes the hurdles that lie in the path of any major new development. The nature of the godfather role is explored through three case studies. These provide examples of the role and show how it can facilitate the innovation process.

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“…This enables the firm to offer greater product variety and customize products to suit many different customer segments [32].…”

Section: Performance Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though modularity may facilitate rapid innovation, firms will also experience resource-intensive upfront development before being able to make use of these benefits, as the initial design efforts needed to create a modularized product portfolio are much higher than designing comparable integrated systems [2], and may include design changes in the manufacturing system, too [32]. It requires extensive architectural knowledge to be able to define which components and interfaces need to be standard and establish how functions can be allocated to components.…”

Section: Performance Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Product, Organizational, and Performance Effects of Product Modularity

Boer

2014

Lecture Notes in Production Engineering

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A lot has been written about the performance effects associated with implementing a higher degree of product modularity in a firm's product portfolio. However, these findings are mostly based on case research in the electronics and automotive industries and have hardly been tested and generalized beyond these industries. To be able to establish whether firms not part of these industries would experience the same performance effects, survey research will be needed. To support future survey research, this paper proposes an operationalization of product modularity and details the link between product modularity and firm performance, to support the future development of measures and hypotheses.

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Managing product families: The case of the Sony Walkman

Cited by 359 publications

References 7 publications

Product Line Selection and Pricing with Modularity in Design

Product Line Selection and Pricing with Modularity in Design

The politics of innovation: Why innovations need a godfather

Product, Organizational, and Performance Effects of Product Modularity

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