A Rigorous Framework for Making Commonality and Modularity Decisions in Optimal Design of Product Families

This article proposes a set of math-based approaches for making commonality and modularity decisions when designing product families. The performance of products that share some components is usually compromised relative to the individual optimum. This deviation occurs because of the commonality constraints that are included in the optimal design problem, especially when the objectives in the multicriteria formulation are conflicting. Choosing components for sharing may depend on what performance deviations can be tolerated. We present rigorous strategies for choosing components to be shared without exceeding userspecified bounds on performance. In addition, we consider modularity to be an outcome of the commonality decision process.