Measuring the Cost Effects of Modular Product Architectures - A Conceptual Approach

摘要

Modular product architectures offer a solution for the trade-off between offering the market a wide variety of products and improving a company's internal cost situation. However, individual cost effects that determine the extent to which modularity should be applied to product architecture are widely unknown in industry. In this paper, we develop a conceptual approach to provide suggestions for improving an examined modular product architecture from a cost perspective. Our work makes an important contribution: The conceptual approach accentuates which steps are necessary in order to recommend whether the product architecture's current degree of modularity should be enhanced or diminished.