An Example of Visually Supported Design of Modular Product Families

To offer individualized products at globally marketable prices, the Integrated PKT-Approach for Developing Modular Product Families aims to generate high external product variety based on a low internal process and component variety. Specific visualizations are an important factor in the success of this approach. In this paper the Module Interface Graph (MIG) developed at the Institute for Product Development and Mechanical Engineering Design (PKT) is used to show how specific visualization concepts of a product family can help present important information, as well as define module interfaces and boundaries during the modularization of a product family. Two brief industrial case studies are presented to give insight into using the MIG and emphasize potential improvements to visual product representations for developing modular product families in a team.