Improving an existing product family based on commonality/diversity, modularity, and cost

As product life cycles become shorter and shorter, stakes are higher in terms of sales and profits, making it an imperative for companies to enhance existing product families as much as possible. In this paper, a methodology using the Design Structure Matrix flow, Value Analysis, and the Commonality versus Diversity Index is proposed to improve an existing family of products. These tools assess and improve commonality/diversity trade-off within the family, feature satisfaction through design, and definition of new modules/components and their interfaces. A case study based on a family of refrigerators is detailed in this paper to demonstrate the methodology.