A decision support system for product family design

Developing a product family under a robust platform provides a company with an important competitive advantage. The competitive benefits include reducing engineering costs and time to market, extending product portfolios and expanding market share. This study illustrated an algorithm based design methodology using two decision techniques for achieving optimal product architecture. The analytic network process (ANP) is employed to consider the relative importance of components in the response of both customer needs and the interrelationship among components. The goal programming approach that incorporates the result of ANP and cost budget limitation then is applied to determine the platform and also the variant components to be focused on redesign. A product family design example is used to illustrate the application of this methodology.