Platform Selection Under Performance Loss Constraints in Optimal Design of Product Families

Abstract

Designing a family of product variants that share some components usually entails a performance loss relative to the individually optimized variants due to the commonality constraints. Choosing components for sharing may depend on what performance losses can be tolerated. This article presents a methodology for making commonality decisions while controlling individual performance losses. Previous work focused on evaluating individual performance losses due to pre-specified sharing. Trade-offs were identified for different platforms (i.e., the sets of components shared among products) by means of Pareto sets. In the present work an optimal design problem is formulated to choose product components to be shared without exceeding a user-specified performance loss tolerance. This enables the designer to control trade-offs and obtain optimal product family designs for different levels of performance losses in an attempt to maximize commonality. A family of automotive side frames is used to demonstrate the approach.