Reconfigurable Models and Product Templates as a Means to Increasing Productivity in the Product Development Process

Investments in process technologies during the past two decades to increase productivity and efficiency in product development have not yielded the gains in productivity that would be expected. This lack of return on investment is due to injecting new process technologies and tools into old product development processes. Globalization and mass customization, termed 'the new business imperative' [1], are also demanding higher levels of productivity. The solution to achieving effective returns on investments in this area of product development lies in designing and implementing product development process (PDP) strategies that integrate and optimize the new process tools and technologies. In this paper, we present new strategies for product development processes that increase productivity and facilitate the implementation of mass customization. These strategies are organized around two concepts: reconfigurable models, defined as parametric scalability of product knowledge and product continua, defined as functional forms of the PDP. Using these concepts we propose constructing new processes as functional forms of reconfigurable product artifacts which can generate continua of product configurations within a specified customization envelope. This approach leverages the new process technologies with a new PDP designed from the outset for productivity and mass customization.