Guidelines to minimize variation when estimating product line commonality through product family dissection

This paper discusses two experiments conducted to investigate the variation that arises when estimating the Product Line Commonality Index (PCI) for a family of products when using data gathered from product dissection. In the first experiment, three main sources of variation were identified: (1) different levels of dissection, (2) omitted components, and (3) different values for the factors used to compute PCI. In the second experiment, guidelines for dissecting subassemblies to the lowest level possible and predefined tables listing material, manufacturing and assembly/fastening schemes were found to significantly reduce variation, leading to more systematic and consistent methods of product family analysis.