Elsevier

Technovation

Volume 20, Issue 11, November 2000, Pages 617-630
Technovation

Developing product platforms:: analysis of the development process

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4972(99)00178-9Get rights and content

Abstract

Several authors have highlighted the importance of companies enhancing their new product development process through a multi-product strategy. This means planning the development of a product family upon a platform, which allows shorter lead times in developing new derivative models. The platform itself has proven to be more flexible when given a modular architecture, so this shifts attention onto evaluating product platform architecture. This paper analyses three industrial cases in order to draw conclusions on the implementation of platforms and modularisation, and in particular on how they deal with this issue. First of all, an interpretation framework is proposed which defines the element taking into account managing with platforms. Secondly, the achieved results in terms of platform flexibility are studied. The paper measures them through analysing the way in which the trade-off between distinctiveness and commonality is dealt with. Finally, since the ability of firms to develop robust product platforms resides in NPD process management and organisation, organisational settings and process flows are examined.

Introduction

Competing with a multi-product strategy, based on product families sharing a common platform, has proved to be a successful approach for many industries (e.g.: electronics, software, automobile, domestic appliances) (Meyer, 1997). In particular, the following advantages in the new product development (NPD) process have been underlined: increased speed in product development, reduction of product development costs, increased product reliability, increased variety and reduced managerial complexity, increased business strategy flexibility.

The first advantage recognised is an increased speed in product development. Wheelwright and Clark (1992) described the importance of a long term planning for product development based on the identification of robust platforms allowing fast product upgrades and enhancements. In this way firms can succeed in bridging the technological gap with competitors or building up long term leadership. Black and Decker, during the seventies, introduced a platform approach to their new product lines development. Their achievement was an average of one new product introduction per week, which lasted for several years (Meyer, 1997).

Another big achievement is the reduction of product development costs. For example, the automotive industry is introducing so-called “world cars”, authentic worldwide commercialised models, with regional market customisation, all sharing a unique product platform. It is widely recognised that this policy is essentially meant for saving product development and production costs.

Thirdly, product reliability is increased after the platform's adoption. Sony's Walkman, through communising the great majority of its mechanisms in successive generations of the product, achieved a quality rise along the platform life (Sanderson and Uzumeri, 1995). Reliability thus became one of the core performances determining a great success of this specific product family on the market place.

The same example of Sony shows how platforms allow increasing external (on-the-market) variety and contemporarily reducing internal variety. In the personal stereo segment, in 1989–1990, Sony was offering 24 different lines in the US and 18 different lines in Japan, highly outperforming every other competitor. The same models had been originated by a single product family and shared a common technology (Sanderson and Uzumeri, 1995).

Platforms increase business flexibility through platform scaling up and down. Indeed the platform approach allows aggressive market strategies, thanks to reduced costs and times in developing new derivative products. The case of Compaq (Meyer, 1997) represents an outstanding case in which the company succeeded in leveraging one basic platform through different market segments. In particular the company extended its “beachhead” platform in both segments of customers and tiers of performance level.

However, a platform approach to product development is not always viable. Sometimes there could be heavy constraints on platform definition, given by a product's architecture. This is what emerges from the research of Muffatto and Roveda (1998), who inquired how architectural characteristics are related to platform applicability. This particular area of interest found roots in the existence of a research stream stressing the importance of product architectures in determining NPD process performances. For instance, Ulrich and Tung (1991) defined the basic concepts of modularity. Baldwin and Clark (1997) underscored the importance of modularity in the case of IBM personal computers. Again Muffatto (1997) discussed the advantages and drawbacks of modularity in the automotive industry. Erixon (1998) provided a method for the design of modularity.

Section snippets

The platform concept

The concept of a product platform has been receiving increased attention in product development and operations management. Several authors have recently been concerned with it (Meyer, 1997, Wheelwright and Clark, 1992, Nobeoka, 1993, Meyer and Utterback, 1993, Sundgren, 1995, Sundgren, 1998, Robertson and Ulrich, 1998). Reviewing the definitions of the platform concept which are provided in the literature, a substantial difference is immediately evident in the approach which researchers adopt.

Aims

This paper is part of a research project about the influence of architectures and platforms on the new product development process. In particular, as underscored in the literature review (Section 2), platforms affect several elements of the NPD process: development strategy, development and operations performance, knowledge retention and transfer, organisation of project teams. The main focus of this paper will be a comparison between different product development organisations in order to

The cases

All considerations presented in the following sections are based upon the analysis of three case studies. They are first summarised and then thoroughly described with particular attention to their innovation process and platform development organisation.

A reference framework

A first examination of the three cases presented suggests a sort of interaction between NPD organisation, process flow and use of product platforms as defined above in this paper. What we try to explain here can be illustrated as shwown in Fig. 4.

Basic characteristics of product ranges

Table 1 presents some basic characteristics of the product ranges that the firms analysed offer to the market place. First of all it is crucial to understand the relationships involving models and families. The higher the number of models spreading out from a unique platform, the heavier is the exploitation of the platform itself and the higher its effectiveness. In the first row of Table 1, the total number of product families is counted. The second row shows the number of models that

Conclusions and further research

In this article we have analysed three industrial cases of platform development processes. In each case, products have a similar overall structure, being essentially based on a mechanical core (iron frame), a power supply, an electrical circuit and electronic controls.

A first achievement is the proposal of a new definition of a platform. Our literature review suggested that existing definitions could be complemented through underlining the need for intentional planning of the platform

Moreno Muffatto holds an M.Sc., Mechanical Engineering and a Doctorate on Industrial Innovation and Management, University of Padua. He is currently Associate Professor of Business Administration, University of Padua. He is active in research on Technology Mangaement, on which he has published papers in international journals and presented papers at international conferences.

He is a Research Affiliate with the international Motor Vehicle Program, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, and is a member of the

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    Moreno Muffatto holds an M.Sc., Mechanical Engineering and a Doctorate on Industrial Innovation and Management, University of Padua. He is currently Associate Professor of Business Administration, University of Padua. He is active in research on Technology Mangaement, on which he has published papers in international journals and presented papers at international conferences.

    He is a Research Affiliate with the international Motor Vehicle Program, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Logistics: Research and Application. He is Chairman of the 4th International Symposium on Logisitics (ISL), Florence, Italy, 1999 and of the 3rd International Symposium on Logisitis, Padua, Italy, 1997, supported by the European Operations Management Association (EurOMA). http://www.unipd.it/∼muffatto

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    Marco Roveda, M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (University of Padua), is currently delivering the final dissertation for a Ph.D. on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management. His field of research is the management of Innovation and New Product Development Process. Upon these themes, he is concentrating on the analysis of technical, strategic and managerial conditions concerning the development of modular products and platforms, which will be discussed in the Ph.D. thesis.

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