Extension of the target cascading formulation to the design of product families

The target cascadingmethodology for optimal product development is extended to product families with predefined platforms. The single-product formulation is modified to accommodate the presence of shared systems, subsystems, and/or components and locally introduced targets. Hierarchical optimization problems associated with each product variant are combined to formulate the product family multicriteria design problem, and common subproblems are identified based on the shared elements (i.e. the platform). The solution of the overall design problem is coordinated so that the shared elements are consistent with the performance and behaviour of the product variants. A simple automotive design example is used to demonstrate the proposed methodology.