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Defining Modules for Platforms: An Overview of the Architecting Process

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Advances in Product Family and Product Platform Design

Abstract

Product platforms have shown to provide significant cost and time savings while still allowing companies to offer a variety of products. As a result, a multitude of methods have been developed to design product platforms. These methods, however, have been developed independent of one another, and it can be daunting to try to compare the methods and understand which approach might be suitable when or how the methods might interlink, if at all. In this chapter, we review the platform architecting process and tie together several approaches introduced both in this book and the existing literature. A family of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is used as an illustrative example to demonstrate several of these approaches and their integration.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, 138682, Singapore

    Katja Hölttä-Otto

  2. Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore

    Kevin N. Otto

  3. Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Timothy W. Simpson

  4. Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Timothy W. Simpson

Authors
  1. Katja Hölttä-Otto
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  2. Kevin N. Otto
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  3. Timothy W. Simpson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katja Hölttä-Otto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Timothy W. Simpson

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Jianxin (Roger) Jiao

  3. School of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA

    Zahed Siddique

  4. Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore

    Katja Hölttä-Otto

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Hölttä-Otto, K., Otto, K.N., Simpson, T.W. (2014). Defining Modules for Platforms: An Overview of the Architecting Process. In: Simpson, T., Jiao, J., Siddique, Z., Hölttä-Otto, K. (eds) Advances in Product Family and Product Platform Design. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7937-6_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7937-6_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-7936-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7937-6

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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