Modularity Adoption in Product Development: A Case Study in the Brazilian Agricultural Machinery Industry

Facing a competitive and globalized market and with increasingly demanding customers, companies must constantly seek the development of practices in the development of new products. One of the current practices is the adoption of modularity. In that sense, the objective of this paper is to conduct an analysis of this practice in a Brazilian company, which manufactures agricultural machinery. The understanding of modular concept for product engineering is investigated as well as current practices adopted by the company. The applicability of modular design in current products is focused. Regarding the research method, these involve firstly a literature review followed by field research using data collected from interviews with product engineers and document analysis as source of evidence. From the results, it is possible to conclude that the adoption of modularity in the development of new products increases production flexibility, reduces product development time and provides economy of scale, with the purchase of standard components in greater volume.