The development of a product platform
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A practical methodology for
designing product platforms
A case study at Biddle
The development of a product platform
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A practical methodology for
designing product platforms
A case study at Biddle
Author: Ronald Veldman
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Student at: University of Groningen
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ABSTRACT
At Biddle the development of the different air curtains was primarily a sequential process in time. This led to multiple variants of air curtains that have to be produced. This puts pressure on Biddle, e.g. the stocks that must be held for all the different components are very large. This effect is amplified by the fact that many suppliers have a long lead time of delivery, making a high safety stock necessary. In addition, many of the components perform exactly the same function, while these components often differ in price. Biddle would like to create more commonality between the different types of products they offer. In order to execute product family design in the future they require a structured methodology, which is easy to use. The main objective of this research is to provide Biddle with a practically oriented methodology for designing product platforms by finding the commonality.
The concepts that are used to do this are: customer needs acquisition, functional decomposition, and describing the product architecture. This led to a new methodology that combines the market needs and the current products. Based on the market needs and functional decomposition new function schemes can been created, which shows possible redesign requirements for the product to keep fulfilling the market needs in the future. The current product is used as a starting point to determine the basic structure of the product architecture and possibilities for standardization. By combining the two it becomes possible to create a standard from the current product portfolio and still match the customer needs, without creating a new product from scratch.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION ... 6
CHAPTER 2 – COMPANY DESCRIPTION BIDDLE BV... 8
2.1 Products ... 8
2.2 Markets... 9
CHAPTER 3 – RESEARCH DESIGN ... 10
3.1 Research background ... 10
3.2 Problem statement ... 10
3.3 Conceptual model and sub-questions ... 11
3.4 Structure of the research ... 13
CHAPTER 4 – PRODUCT DESIGN AT BIDDLE ... 15
4.1 Product development at Biddle ... 15
4.2 Practical limitations in the product development process ... 21
4.3 Limitations derived from theory ... 22
4.4 Summary... 25
CHAPTER 5 – A REVISED METHODOLOGY ... 26
5.1 Product platform design method ... 26
5.1.1 Gathering and grouping the customer needs ... 28
5.1.2 Coupling the customer needs to functions ... 33
5.1.3 The function to component mapping ... 34
5.2 Summary... 39
CHAPTER 6 – APPLYING THE METHODOLOGY AT BIDDLE ... 40
6.1 Analyzing the customer data ... 40
6.2 Determining the functions and components ... 43
6.3 Creating the function to component mapping ... 46
6.4 Calculating the GVI and CI’s at Biddle ... 49
6.5 Summary... 56
CHAPTER 7 – CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ... 58
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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
In the contemporary situation of a buyer’s market, manufacturing firms must satisfy a variety of individual customer needs in order to survive. Three issues are arising (Sivard: 2000):
• The first is the increasing amount of demand for products that are customized to individual wishes.
• A short lead time is becoming more and more important to meet the customer preferences that are continuously changing.
• Continuous cost reduction is needed.
Establishing a broad product variety within a short time span often results in an increase in costs. A broad variety of products can result in an increased amount of setup times, higher inventory costs, and higher complexity in the product line (Sivard: 2000). Many management strategies address the development of single products as rapid as possible. Since many companies design new products one at a time, the focus on individual customers and products often results in “a failure to embrace commonality, compatibility, standardization, or modularization among different products or product lines” (Meyer and Lehnerd, 1997). To overcome this trade-off between performance and costs, mass customization has become a new paradigm in the 90’s (Pine, 1993). By mass customization companies can translate the trade-off into a win-win situation, where customers receive products matching their specific needs, while producers benefit because they operate with fewer inventories and deliver product as expected. Designing a family of products, a group of related products from a common product platform, provides an efficient and effective method to realize sufficient product variety to satisfy a variety of market niches while maintaining economies of scale in the purchasing, manufacturing, and supply process. By using a common product platform to create product families someone can benefit from several cost advantages, since it will lead to reduction of (Gonzalez-Zugasti, 1999):
- Design costs (through design reuse).
- Manufacturing costs (through economies of scale). - Administrative costs.
- Maintenance costs (through standardization).
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By implementing a product family design approach a firm strives to develop a common product platform in the early stages of the product development cycle, which forms the bases for differentiated products in later stages. With careful planning, similarities among product variants are identified and exploited to specify the platform that eventually leads to a simplification of the individual product development tasks. A more optimized product platform design results in lower design costs for the individual variants that are derived from it. The question is how a company can determine the appropriate common product platform that forms the main architecture for the product family. The company Biddle copes with this question too and will be used as a test case for this research.
Biddle produces air curtains and has 80 employees. An air curtain can be placed above a door entrance and blows hot air to the ground so no cold air can enter the building. In Biddle’s search for a product platform they are looking for a methodology to determine a suitable product platform for their air curtain family. Most methods executing product family design are focused on large companies. On the other hand small manufacturers often lack “financial float” that is available in large companies, therefore they do not have access to all sorts of data analysis systems (Simpson, 2003). Since the data handling is substantial to analyze all customer wishes and product properties, Biddle would like a decision support system to support them in creating a product platform. To develop such a decision support system, a methodology should be developed addressing the steps to be taken in such a tool.
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CHAPTER 2 – COMPANY DESCRIPTION BIDDLE BV
Biddle was founded in 1943 in England, through the years different sales offices were established. Until recently the company was owned by the Biddle family, but nowadays the company is part of Carver PLC. Biddle has been a producer of climate solutions for over 50 years. In 1957 Biddle expanded to the Netherlands and currently Biddle is present in over 25 countries with their sales departments and distributors and is a leading producer of climate solutions. Specialized in the design, production and supply of different air heating techniques for the consumer market as well as the industrial market, they are one of the major players in the market. The facility in the Netherlands is located in Kootstertille and has a workforce of 80 employees. They are responsible for the development and production of units for heating and cooling in public buildings, retail stores and industry sectors.
2.1 Products
Biddle offers a wide variety of climate control solutions. The product portfolio includes air curtains, cassette units, air heaters (nozzle heating), and fan coil units. A specific product range that Biddle provides is that of comfort air curtains. For this research the product range considered will be restricted to these comfort air curtains.
An air curtain is a ventilation unit that is placed above the entrance of a door and blows the appropriate air flow towards the ground to maintain the temperature in the building. There are three types of comfort air curtains in the Biddle portfolio:
- the CA model, is a premium air curtain suited for the premium segment of the market. - the CITY model which is derived from the CA model. The CITY is a cheaper
alternative than the CA and focuses more on the lower end of the premium segment and the middle segment of the market.
- the SF model is a cheaper air curtain primarily sold in the Eastern part of Europe. The SF is developed as a standalone version and the similarity with the other two types is low.
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temperature efficiently, therefore a customer can choose between different sizes of height and width.
2.2 Markets
In the Netherlands the market can be distinguished into three market sectors. There is the premium segment, where order winners are factors like quality, product flexibility or mix flexibility (Slack: 2000). The price of the air curtain plays a less significant role in this sector. The middle sector requires a good price/quality ratio as well as very reliable products. Products must be functional here as opposed to the premium market where design and comfort plays an important role. Then there is the cost based sector, the main order winner here is the price of the air curtains. Biddle serves the middle and premium segments, and the price based products are primarily exported to East European countries. With a market share of approximately 16% in the Netherlands they belong to the top 3 companies in their market.
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CHAPTER 3 – RESEARCH DESIGN 3.1 Research background
At Biddle the development of the air curtain families was primarily a sequential process in time. In the current situation they posses three types of air curtains, which share some commonality although it became clear that this is far from optimum. The SF and CITY families’ functions are similar to those of the CA family, but the commonality between the three variants is low. This puts pressure on the organization, for example the stocks that must be held for all the different components are very large. This effect is amplified by the suppliers that have a long lead time of delivery, making a high safety stock necessary. In addition it is clear that many of the components perform exactly the same function. These components often differ in price.
Moreover the strategy of Biddle focuses heavily on continuous innovation. The market of air curtains is a competitive one and new patents and improvements can bring the competitive edge they need. This requires Biddle to bring new products to the market regularly. If Biddle has a product platform it would be easier to create new types of products regularly. Multiple derivatives could be taken from the common technological base that is created in the product platform.
Although the product developers see a lot of opportunities to alter the current products into a more generic product platform they haven’t succeeded to do so. A product platform could help them in reaching the advantages of product family design. To execute product family design in the future they require a structured methodology, which is easy to use. The main objective of this research is to provide Biddle with a practically oriented methodology to find the commonality in their product range leading to a product platform.
3.2 Problem statement
The development of a product platform
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Provide Biddle with a methodology for designing product platforms by finding the commonality within their product families of air curtains.1
- What are limitations of the existing product design approach at Biddle?
This methodology must be structured so it can be used in an intelligent decision support system in the future.
Research question:
There are two questions to be addressed in order to come to a decision support system. The first is:
- What improvements can be made to the current methodology at Biddle to create a new product platform for the air curtain families?
The result of this research is a method which supports the design team in finding commonalities in the markets they are serving and products they are offering. Based on these commonalities it is possible to create a standard platform from which different variants of products can be derived. This is necessary to offer sufficient product variety to meet the different customer wishes.
3.3 Conceptual model and sub-questions
Many authors have written about new product development (Ulrich and Eppinger, 2000; Suh, 1998; Veenstra et al, 2005). A general consensus seems to be that the starting point of new product development are the customer needs which are rough statements that a customer would like to see in the product (for example the customer wants a stylish air curtain).
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A product platform can be defined as a set of subsystems and interfaces that form a common structure from which a stream of derivative products can be efficiently developed
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Figure 3.1 - Conceptual Model
Within the market there are needs that are common between customers, but there are also needs that differ between customers. When all the customer wishes are gathered, these have to be defined in terms of technical requirements. The common customer needs will result in common requirements that all the products share and there will be variable requirements fulfilled in a specific product family to serve a market segment. The product platform encompasses the design and components shared by the products. The products that share the common platform but have specific features and functionality required by different sets of customers form the product family. In this case we are looking for the common requirements which results in the common features that have to be present in the platform. After analyzing the customer needs different functions can be developed to determine the common and differentiating features. The functions allow the designer to create a generic product architecture, which is the basic architecture to fulfil the functions that need to be present in every product. The final step is to decide which components must be made part of the product platform.
The following sub questions need to be answered to come to the product platform at Biddle: 1. What are the limitations of the current product platform methodology used at Biddle? 2. What are the market's needs regarding Biddle’s air curtains?
3. Which functions can be developed based on the market needs? 4. What is the generic product architecture of an air curtain?
5. Which modules can be distinguished in the air curtain, and which components can be part of the product platform?
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Ulrich and Eppinger (2003) have proposed methods to gather the customer needs in a specific market. One of the well known methods is quality function deployment, this involves a collection of the customer needs in a market, and describes them as technical requirements for the product. This can be used to determine the market needs and requirements. This is especially useful because in the current situation Biddle already performed the first steps of quality function deployment.
The next step is to determine the functions of the product. Fixson (2005) uses functional decomposition to decompose a current product into different functions. Furthermore Fixson shows a function component analysis which involves a mapping from the defined functions to actual physical components to create a generic product architecture. In addition Fixson proposes an interface matrix to determine the standardization of the interfaces between the different components.
To determine which parts can be made part of the platform Veenstra (2005) and Blackenfelt (2001) are used. Veenstra (2005) offers a generic stepwise model to come to a product platform decision within a firm. They distinguish between three main steps which are subsequently determining the product architecture, the determination of the interfaces between the different functions and finally determine the standards that can be made common in the product range. The end result is a proposal to determine whether a component can be made standard, or has to be modularized. Blackenfelt (2001) shows different modularity drivers, these are factors that influence the decision regarding the function to component mapping (the product architecture) and can be used as decision criteria to decide if a component can be part of the standard product platform.
3.4 Structure of the research
The following structure is used in this research:
Analysis of the current System: Chapter 4 – Product Design at Biddle Creating a new methodology structure: Chapter 5 – A revised methodology
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CHAPTER 4 – PRODUCT DESIGN AT BIDDLE
This chapter introduces the organizations current viewpoint towards product design. The current methodology will be discussed and described in a more formal manner. Furthermore it aims to give a presentation of the problems that the employees perceive while developing products in the current situation, these will be called the problem owners (de Leeuw, 2001).
4.1 Product development at Biddle
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Figure 4.1 - Product Development at Biddle The method they used previously for developing the current products did not take into account the possible future derivates and similarities between their product ranges. Last year their product development system was revised by van Kessel (2007). The old system primarily lacked the acquisition of customer wishes and the translation of these into specific technical requirements for the products. There was a mismatch between the customer needs and the offered products. Van Kessel (2007) adjusted the method and proposed a method by which Biddle could gather the customer data and process this data into useful design parameters. An overview of this method will be presented in the next section.
Revised Methodology at Biddle
The product development process starts at the sales department. The sales department identified 9 market segments in the Netherlands:
1. Do it yourself shop 2. Supermarket 3. Boutique 4. Hospital 5. Office 6. Bank 7. Department store 8. Clothing shop KMG model CA model
CITY model SF model
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n the market segment
i the product attribute
Vin The value of importance on a scale between 1-5 for the i-th product attribute in
segment n.
FRin The functional requirement of product attribute i in market segment n
With: Vin ∈ {1,2,3,4,5}
n ∈ {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} i ∈
The interpretation of the product attribute can be seen as the functional requirement or metrics following from the needs (Suh,1998) (Ulrich and Eppinger, 2003). The value of importance is stated using a Likert scale where 1 represents very unimportant to a customer and 5 means very important to the customer. With this step the customer requirements for all the market segments should be known.
After all the questionnaires have been returned to the research and development department a summary is made. This shows all the different attributes mapped to the market segments, with their value of importance. The interpretation of the different product attributes is stated there too, which is the summary of the stated FRin. The next step is to categorize the product
attributes. At Biddle there are three categories of product attributes:
I. Variation product attributes. These are product attributes that require variation, this variation is demanded by all market segments and the variation requested is exactly the same for all of these market segments. For example every market segment wants ambient, water, or an electrical heating solution.
II. Differentiating attributes. These are product attributes that have varying values in the different market segments regarding the variation offered for each of the product attributes. For example, market segment 1 only wants a lifespan of the product of 5 years, while market segment 2 wants a lifespan of 10 years.
III. Non-Differentiating product attributes. The product attributes that only have one
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do not want different options for these. For example a level of maintenance of 5 years is suited for every market segment.
With the individual market segment scores for each of the product attributes, a categorization of the product attributes can be made. This is done by two metrics:
1. The absolute difference between the product attribute scores, which is the difference between the highest and the lowest score on a certain product attribute. The following reasoning is followed: the higher the absolute difference between the products attribute scores, the higher the market segment wishes differ on this product attribute, and thus the higher the value of variety to the customer. Which can be noted as:
AbsVi = | (max Vin – min Vin) |
2. The average of the product attributes scores, which is the average of all the values of importance of the identified market segments on a certain product attribute. The higher the average product attribute score, the higher the overall importance of a specific product attribute for all the market segments. Which can be noted as:
AvgVi =
∑
= • i i Vin n 1 / 1The product attributes are then sorted based on AbsVi, and all attributes with the same AbsVi
are sortedon the AvgVi. This makes it possible to give a rank order of the different product
attributes and put them in the correct category. After all the attributes are put in one category they are sorted on their absolute/average value of importance. The logic behind this is that the differentiating factors should be more suited for optional additions to a product or separate modules, while the common factors are more suitable to be used in the product platform of the product.
To summarize, the following steps are performed:
Determine - based on FRi - which attributes will be put in which of the three categories.
Calculate AbsVi = | (max Vin – min Vin) | for each i identified
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Sort all i based on AvgVin =
∑
= • i i Vin n 1 / 1
The sorting is performed within each of the categories. The result is shown in figure 4.2 in the left column.
The next step is to determine the chunks j that are present in the current air curtains (shown in the top row in figure 4.2). At this moment 11 chunks are used:
1. Air Filter 2. Rectifier 3. Temperature regulator 4. Electronics 5. Adjustable damper 6. Heating solution 7. Fan
8. Air inlet grill 9. Casing
10. Hanging solution 11. Control Panel
So j ∈ {1,2, …,10, 11}.
The chunks (basic components) have to be sorted on the cost of variety Cj, a high cost of variety basically means that changing the chunk slightly will involve a high cost increase of the product. At this moment there is not an exact way to determine the cost of variety for the different chunks. There are main chunks and add chunks, it is stated the add chunks are easier to change than the main ones. This selection is based on rough estimations (van Kessel, 2007).
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place the product platform planning has to be focused on to minimize these costs (Van Kessel, 2007).
Figure 4.2 - Sorting the chunks and attributes These elements are the critical few on which platform planning is focused, because variety is wanted for these chunks but it is very expensive to offer this to the customer. The chunks that are not the focus of the product platform can be standardized as much as possible. The chunks that are solely related to the variation product attributes are asked by all market segments.
Finally new types of models are developed by looking at the functional requirements and
looking for the amount of variety between them. This allows the designer to make a range of models. These models are compared to the original product by looking at the interfaces between the chunks so that it becomes clear if it is possible to vary with a specific component without affecting all the others.
4.2 Practical limitations in the product development process
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• Biddle just started with the execution of the new product platform methodology. The questionnaires to gather all the important attributes in all of the market segments are being analyzed. They gathered the customer data for all the market segments in Europe. This resulted in a very large data set, which is hard to handle without some kind of automatic data processing or clustering.
• Although some predefined product attributes were given to the salesmen at the different locations, there were no structural guidelines regarding the description of a product attribute. An example is the statement lifespan for which a value of importance has to be given. Since there is no indication about the length of the lifespan, it is hard to give an importance value to this attribute. The actual length of the lifespan can perhaps be filled in at the “interpretation” field behind the product attribute. This means that everyone scores the value of importance different resulting in a useless absolute value of importance later on.
• The current methodology is focused on translating all the customer needs into the new products and these form the bases for determining the platform. To create the actual product architecture for the platform Biddle needs to know what they can modularize or standardize in the product, and what consequences this has for the production process and redesign of the product later on. No guidelines are presented regarding these choices.
4.3 Limitations derived from theory
In this section a theoretical overview of product platform and family design will be given. This will be compared with the methodology at Biddle to determine to what extent the current methodology can be optimized using these theories.
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design parameters for which a family of product can be developed. It is actually the common technological base from which a product family is derived, by modifying the product platform to suit the needs of target market niches (Simpson, 2003). From the above definition it becomes clear that a product family should be designed to satisfy a range of functional requirements, and the ideal product platform should include all non-differentiating features of the product family. In the methodology to determine the product platform at Biddle this is done as well. All the attributes are collected and placed into the three categories. In the attribute to component matrix (see figure 4.2) the non-differentiating attributes are always in the lower end of demanded customer variety and should therefore be standardized according to the attribute to component matrix.
The design of a product platform with the corresponding product family faces the same challenges as regular new product development. Moreover the complexity associated with it is higher, due to the fact that a maximum amount of commonality between the products - without losing the match with individual customer needs - is necessary. The product platform can be altered in two ways to create a range of variants which ultimately leads to the product family. This can either be done by adding, substituting or removing one or more functional modules from the product platform – the module based product family – or by using scaling variables that are used to stretch or shrink the product, which is the scale based product family (Simpson, 2001). At Biddle both types are used. Sometimes modules are changed, for example the heating element can be changed into water heating or electrical heating. But the casing is scaled to create the correct measurements for a specific room.
In order to determine how a module or scale based product family can be developed it is important to look at the customer needs, but also to look at the product architecture of each product family. Product architecture is a matrix by which the functions are mapped to the different physical components (Simpson, 2003). Ulrich (1995) says the product architecture basically consists of three elements:
1. The arrangement of the functional elements.
2. The mapping from the functional elements to the physical components. 3. The specification of the interfaces among interacting physical components.
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the same it is possible to use similar components in the product which offer the same functionality. For example at Biddle the air curtains all fulfill the function of blowing air throughout the casing, but the fans used in the different product families differ a lot. Looking at the components the resemblance between the air curtains seems low, but by looking at the functions possibilities for commonality are shown.
In the current methodology of Biddle there is much attention for the gathering and analyzing of customer needs that have to result in a new product platform. There is almost no attention for the actual product architecture of the air curtains. The possibilities for creating a standardized, a modular or a customer specific chunk does not only depend on the cost of variety of one chunk. For example creating a standard interface with a module makes it easier in the production process to offer variety without having to setup their station differently. Therefore it is important to look at the drivers that influence the decision to make a chunk modular or an integral part of the product (Blackenfelt, 2001). When multiple functions are linked with one single component the product architecture is more integral, while when there are primarily one to one mappings the product architecture is more modular. It is easier to create variety for modules than for integral parts, because the modular chunks do not affect the other components that much.
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Veenstra (2005) offers a generic stepwise model to come to a product platform decision within a firm. They distinguish between three main steps which are subsequently:
1. Determine the product architecture.
2. Determine the interfaces between the different functions.
3. Determine the standards that can be made common in the product range.
With the Design for Variety method (Veenstra, 2005) it becomes possible to calculate two marks the Generational Variety Index (GVI) and the Coupling Index (CI). The GVI makes it possible to indicate which module must be altered in consideration with the customer, it gives an indication of the amount of redesign required to meet future market requirements. The CI gives an impression of the coupling between the components within the system. The advantage of such indexes is that it can easily be calculated by a computer, reducing the time needed to create a similarity between products by the development team. With this method we can analyze the current products generic structure and use this to find the possibilities for standards.
These theories show that the product on itself can also be used as a starting point to determine a possible platform. In the current methodology of Biddle this is the main issue. There is no step to determine the degree of modularity of the air curtains. Moreover no function mapping is used to decompose the product. The method from Veenstra (2005) shows a method to create a combination of the importance of the customer needs for the different product attributes and looks as well at the product architecture. Creating an extra step in the methodology to map the product architecture could help Biddle in determining similarities between the current products they have, instead of starting from the beginning all over again.
4.4 Summary
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CHAPTER 5 – A REVISED METHODOLOGY
In this chapter an overview of the revised methodology will be presented. This will form the basis for the detailed execution of each step at Biddle presented in the next chapter. The underlying theories were already shortly presented in the previous chapter, the goal here is to bring them together into one specified structure with steps that have to be taken by Biddle.
5.1 Product platform design method
In this section the methodology to come to a new product platform is described. The product platform design methodology consists of several steps. The goal is to gather the different customer needs in the markets they serve and to look for commonalities between them that offer possibilities for standardization. Those in turn need to be translated into functions that the product has to offer to meet the customer needs. The functions are performed by the different components of the product that have to be selected, while trying to maintain commonality between the different variants as much as possible to create a product platform. This way you work from the customer needs towards an actual physical product platform.
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Figure 5.1 - Platform design methodology
Gather the customer needs
Cluster the customers into market segments Determine the common
customer needs of the different market segments
Determine the needed functions of the product.
Based on the current product and the market
needs. Analyze the current product architecture of the
air curtain. Determine the interfaces.
Use Veenstra’s calculation of GVI and Coupling indexes to create
platform proposals. Evaluate the platform
proposal using the modularity drivers as evaluation criteria and the
technical feasibility presented in the product
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5.1.1 Gathering and grouping the customer needs
The customer needs are taken into account. Each customer has his own specific needs regarding an air curtain. Although each customer has his individual needs, many of the customers also have the same needs resulting in commonality between them. A market segment shows such a group of customers who have more or less the same wishes regarding their products. Based on these market segments it is possible to propose different models for specific markets. For example it could be that market segment 1 is looking for a premium quality air curtain with a lot of extra features like fan speed adjustments, while market segment 2 is just looking for a basic cheaper alternative that only focuses on the function of climate separation.
By creating a product platform it is possible to derive products suited for a specific market segment from the platform itself, the common basis (Meyer & Lehnerd 1997). The common basis includes chunks that provide a way to meet the similar customer needs that are asked by several different market segments. Between the market segments there will be several attributes that are common between them and there will be attributes that will make the difference between them. Those common customer wishes are the ones the platform should focus on, while the individual needs could be more customer specific by offering different modules or in special cases make them customer specific.
Customer Need 1 5 2 4 3 CN2 3 5 5 1 CN3 4 3 1 3 CN4 1 3 5 4 CN5 2 3 2 2 … 1 1 1 1 … 5 4 5 5 … 3 4 3 3 … 1 1 1 1 Market segment 1 MS2 MS3 ..
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Common needs are customer needs which are similar, and get the same value of importance from the different markets. The individual needs differ highly in importance between them, or these are needs only mention by a specific market. In terms of the current terminology at Biddle the common needs are non-differentiating, while the individual needs are differentiating.
Solving the customer data gathering at Biddle
Two issues were present at Biddle as explained in the previous chapter. The first was the ability to gather the customer needs in a correct way, resulting in useful product attributes. Another aspect is that within Biddle they do not have a market segmentation based on the behaviours and buying process of the customers, but based on the types of stores and the geographic location. For example the segment banks in Germany and banks in the Netherlands, the sizes are more or less the same so are the buildings and the climate, although the wishes could be different between them it’s unknown if this is the case in the current product development process. A method to determine the market segments is highly wanted, since the current market segments do not offer what is intended. They would like to change this into a more suited market segmentation, allowing them to create a specific variant for each market segment.
Ulrich and Eppinger (2003) provide 5 steps to identify the needs of a target market, which can be used to improve the data gathering in future questionnaires from the customers:
1. Gather the raw data from the customers. This can be done by interviews between the development team member and a customer, a focus group in which a moderator facilitates a discussion with 8 to 12 customers about an existing product. Or by observing current products in use. According to Griffin and Hauser (1993), individual face-to-face interviews may be more cost effective than focus groups, and 20± 30 customers should be interviewed to obtain 90± 95% of all the possible customer needs.
2. Interpret raw data in terms of customer needs. Translating the hard data into the different needs is a subjective process, so it’s good to let more people perform this activity. To create structure into this process Ulrich and Eppinger propose 5 guidelines:
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30 • Express the need as specifically as the raw data • Use positive not negative phrasing
• Express the need as an attribute of the product.
• Avoid the words must and should, since they imply importance of a need. This will be measured in a later stage.
These two steps can be performed by filling in one questionnaire slightly different from the one used at the moment by the sales people. The salesmen can use a focus group with lead users for this or interview.
Question Customer Statement Interpretated Need
Typical uses The air curtain
shouldn’t be too loud
The air curtain remains a sound level of lower than 50 dbA
Likes / Dislikes current tool
We need to clean the filter every month
The level of maintenance for the air curtain should be reduced
Suggested Improvements
The air curtain could remove cigarette smoke from the room
Offer a possibility to clean the air with the air curtain
3. Organize the needs into a hierarchy. The result of the previous two steps is a list of 50-300 need statements, to make this more comprehensible it’s important to make a hierarchy of the different need statements.
4. Establish the relative importance of the needs. Usually customers are asked by a survey or phone to state their importance for each need on a Likert scale from 1-5 or 1-10. Since many customers have to be surveyed in order to get statistical significant results, interviews or focus groups don’t seem very suited.
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Since Biddle already asked all the salesmen for their customer data using Van Kessel (2007) interview they decided not to redo this procedure from the beginning. They did create a new questionnaire asking more detailed info about the customer needs they got from van Kessel’s questionnaire. These results are used in the next chapter.
After the collection of these customer needs we can use these to create the market segments. Market segmentation wants to split the market into different groups of customers with the same needs. The advantage is that the supplier can adjust his marketing mix to this specific segment (Biemans, 2004). Since we already have all the attribute values for the different customer wishes in the different markets we can use these to look for similarities between them. Zhang (2007) states that the similarity of an attribute’s instances is determined by comparing their difference in attribute values. The similarity is: the value of an attribute in a market segment minus that in another market segment, divided by the maximum value of that attribute over all markets minus the minimum value of that attribute over all markets.
Similarity of two attributes: 1 - |Vin – Vin+1| / Max (Vin) – Min(Vin)
The similarity between two markets is calculated as a weighted sum of similarity measures of all their attributes. An example of creating the market segments is stated below:
Example of making a market segment
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Then the similarity coefficients are calculated which is shown in the column “coefficient AB” which shows the similarity between large stores and food stores in the Netherlands. In this case 1 – (|2-5| / (5-2)) = 0. In the column similarity degree this is multiplied by the weight factor which is 0,2 * 0 = 0 as similarity degree for that attribute. Finally all coefficients have to be multiplied by the assigned weight factor and summed to get the grand total (in this case 0,5866) which can be typified as a measure of similarity between the two markets. By doing this for every pair of markets a matrix can be constructed showing all the relations, and the according amount of similarity between them.
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In this case it becomes clear that market A has a great similarity with market D, and B has a very tight relationship with market C. This results in the creation of two segments. This is an enhanced version of van Kessel (2007) method, which used the absolute values and the average values both. This way you get a similarity value in one mark, allowing a quick overview of the possible clusters or markets to be served with 1 type of model.
Based on the market needs and the market segmentation, we can look for commonality between those customer needs and create different models that we have to offer the markets to suit their needs. These could become product families later on, but more important show us what the variable requirements are between those market segments. At Biddle they used the results from the new questionnaire to look for similarities in the markets and based on this they created different models to serve the different markets. The results are presented in the next chapter.
5.1.2 Coupling the customer needs to functions
One major part in determining product architecture is the determination of the functions the product fulfills. Every customer wish that is wanted needs to be fulfilled by a function of the product, or a function can be needed to fulfill a higher level function that meets the customer demand. The customer needs are translated into the functions executed by the product, here the common wishes are translated in the functions that apply to every product variant and are part of the common bases.
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5.1.3 The function to component mapping
The generic product architecture has to be described, by which we mean the different physical components that fulfil the functions. The components compositions within a product make up the product architecture of a product. The product architecture describes the components together with their interfaces (Erens, 1997). Ulrich and Eppinger (2003) come with more or less the same definition: “The physical elements of a product are typically organized into several major physical building blocks, which we call chunks. The architecture of a product is the scheme by which the functional elements of the product are arranged into physical chunks and by which the chunks interact.”
The product architecture can be a result of a decomposition activity, it can also be the starting point of development. More companies are defining the product architecture before the actual development of the product. There are many reasons for this, in the case of Biddle the main reason is that it allows to look for the amount of commonality and variety needed. Product architecture creates the possibility of replacing components with components that have identical interfaces, still meeting the variety of customer requirements. Some components do not have variants and are therefore common for the product family and are a stable factor in the design (Erens and Verhulst, 1997). In addition a defined product architecture allows for reuse of the design for the development of new products. Both are very important goals for Biddle, and describing the product architecture can help them forwards in achieving these goals.
Interfaces
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implemented by several chunks and the chunks are connected with coupled interfaces (Ulrich and Eppinger, 2003).
Components can be coupled in different degrees, in order to describe an interface three categories are classified:
1. The type of interface between two components. There are four forms of interactions possible. The first is a spatial interaction that implies a need for a correct positioning of two components towards each other in order to function appropriate. For example the fan should be placed close to the air inlet grille to suck in the air into the air curtain. Another interaction is an energetic interaction that identifies the need for energy transport between two components. An information interaction implies a need for information or a signal to be transmissioned between two components, for example adjusting the regulator to control the fan speed. And finally the material interaction which means two components are physically connected. The intensity of the interface is stated by a scale from -2 to +2, respectively from a loosely coupled interface to a tightly coupled one.
2. The reversibility of an interface. This gives a value for the effort it takes to decouple the interface again. This effort is dependent on two factors: the effort it takes to decouple the interface physically (for example decoupling the fan requires the case to be opened and the removal of the wire), and the depthness of the interface in the product (for example the air outlet grill can be removed without touching the rest of the product). In case a component can be decoupled really easy, it is more suited to be changed for different components in the production process. So when a fan has a low reversibility it can be easily changed for another type of fan without resulting in much higher production costs, and it is still possible to meet the customers varying wishes. 3. The last category is the possibility for standardization. In a modular product
architecture it is relatively easy to exchange sub-units without affecting the rest of the product. How easy this is depends on the reversibility (stated above) and the amount of alternatives possible for a specific chunk.
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Veenstra e.a. suggests possibilities for possible product platforms in their methodology. First of all they emphasize the importance of describing the chunks in the product with the functions they perform as has been done in the previous step. This is the first step in their methodology shown in the figure below (from Veentra e.a., 2005).
Figure 5.3 – Protocol for developing product platforms (Veenstra, 2005)
This basic overview of the product architecture can now be used to continue with two different steps:
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- The second step is the description and ordering of the interfaces and calculation of the Coupling indexes. The coupling indexes give an impression of the sensitivity between two components. There are two indices. The CI-S which shows to what extent information supplied from component 1 influences component 2. The CI-R shows to what extent component 1 is influenced by information he receives from the other components.
Based on these two marks conclusions can be drawn regarding component standardization and the identification of possible modules. They do this using the decision rules from Martin and Ishii (2002). To look for possible parts that can be standardized the following rules apply:
• Fully standardized: it is expected that the component will not change across generations. This implies that the GVI and CI–R are equal to zero.
• Partially standardized: the component is expected to require minor changes across generations. The higher the GVI and CI–R, the less standardized is the component.
Regarding possible modularization (Ci-S related) there are two other rules to be followed. • Fully modularized: the geometry, energy, material, or signal (GEMS) of the component can be changed to meet expected customer requirements without requiring other components to change. This implies that the CI–S of the component is zero.
• Partially modularized: changes in the GEMS of the component may require changes in other components. The higher the CI–S, the more changes expected, and thus the component is considered less modular.
The result of this is that we have a table with components that can be standardized immediately without any redesigning needed. It also identifies the components that must be redesigned in order to make them standard or modularize them as it cannot be done in the current situation.
Modularity Drivers
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high making it impossible to standardize or modularize the component in its current form. The choices regarding the product architecture, like modularity versus integral, the degree of standardization of the interfaces are driven by different factors. These factors are called module drivers (Blackenfelt, 2001). The modularity drivers can be divided into several sections
• Drivers regarding manufacturing – examples are commonality for economies of scale, late differentiation, parts reduction, fewer tools, and standard methods. For example one can imagine that when Biddle only uses one type of fan, this will reduce inventory costs and the employees always have to assemble it in the same way reducing setup times.
• Drivers regarding purchasing – examples are part reductions, part availability (standard parts are better available), outsourcing (standardized interfaces allows third parties to know exactly what to make).
• Supply chain management – examples are part reduction, stock reduction, short delivery terms. By having varying modules on stock, you can configure products quicker when short delivery is wanted.
• Product service and support – here we can think of maintenance, tools, move-ability and separate testing. The more modular like the product is, the easier it is to remove a specific module and test it for service activities.
• Product management – A modular like structure makes it easy to add/upgrade options products or differentiate the products in a later stage. This is important for Biddle too cause they would like to derive new families from the platform in the future.
• Research and development – Examples are reuse, separate testing, parallel development, component swapping, variation in market needs. When the interfaces are standard and components can be swapped easily, it becomes possible to create new options separately or add a component for a specific market segment.
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5.2 Summary
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CHAPTER 6 – APPLYING THE METHODOLOGY AT
BIDDLE
In this chapter the methodology will be applied to Biddle. At the moment Biddle is working on gathering all the customer data and creating product models which they should offer the different markets. Therefore some data is not complete, but using the data available to us now does show the purpose and application of the methodology.
6.1 Analyzing the customer data
In this chapter an overview of the revised methodology will be given applied to Biddle. In the current situation Biddle is gathering all the customer data, after the first collection of the customer needs they gave another questionnaire to the sales departments to gather the final scores on the attributes. By using the product platform design methodology, they created the market segmentation and developed several models to serve these markets. In this section an overview of those results will be presented.
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Figure 6.1 – Market Segmentation Roughly there are three clusters with different needs:
1) Cluster 1 is the top level product. This one has several characteristics: i. Exclusive design
ii. Minimalistic iii. Stainless steel iv. Automatic control
v. No maintenance vi. Low noise
vii. High comfort and a high performance
2) Cluster 2 involves a high level product. It has several characteristics: i. A modern design
ii. White and metal colours iii. Automatic controls iv. Good performance
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3) The final cluster is a low level product. It has the following characteristics: i. Basic design
ii. Basic control
iii. Sufficient performance iv. Good comfort
v. Price is important
In the graph below the three clusters are presented on their measured attributes:
To summarize there are several similarities and differences between the models wanted by the customers. The similarities are:
• The door heights. All the products can sustain with a door height that differs between 2 and 4 meter.
• The door widths. All the products can suffice with a door width between 1m to 4 meters.
• The outside temperature range that the air curtain must be able to handle, must be between -20 degrees and +30 degrees.
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• The mounting options needed are similar for all the market segments.
• All the markets want a low maintenance air curtain. More or less restricted to cleaning an air filter.
There are also major differences:
• The main difference is the price level. It differs from a product above the current CA level to a product with a price level lower than the current SF level. So a lower price variant is wanted.
• Differences in performance. This ranges from good performance to excellent
performance. This involves the main purpose of the air curtain, not every air curtain must have a 100% climate separation.
• Differences in control options. This can vary from a simple switch to changing the fan speed to an automatic control.
• Differences in design aspects. The top levels must have a highly architectural design, while the lower segments are happy with a simple white box.
6.2 Determining the functions and components
One major part in determining a product architecture is the determination of the functions the product fulfills. Every customer wish that is wanted needs to be fulfilled by a function of the product, or a function can be needed to fulfill a higher level function that meets the customer demand. One method to determine the functions of a product is functional decomposition, since we already have a comfort air curtain that can be decomposed this method is used. It is possible to add or remove functions in case there are customer wishes that aren’t taken into account in the current group of defined functions. In cooperation with the product designer the following functions have been determined regarding the comfort air curtain. In figure 6.2.1 an overview of the functions is presented.
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Figure 6.2.1 - Functions of an air curtain
The next step is the selecting the chunks of the air curtain that are used to map the functions to. The air curtain is quite a basic product with only a couple of important chunks that consist again of different parts. The following components have been identified:
• Casing. This is the exterior part of the air curtain, the plastic side panels with the front and back cover that are around the entire product. All the other components are placed in this casing.
• Heating element. The heating element is a metal component consisting of several tubes that flow through for example hot water resulting in the heating of the airstream. • Fan. The fan makes sure the air enters the air curtain. There is a great variety of types
and sizes. Create visual appeal Aircurtain Create open walkthrough Climate Control Clean air and energy savings Climate Seperation Heat incoming air Prevent Convection
Blow out air
Regulate Airspeed Convert airstream Heat outcoming air Regulate Temperature Protect against danger for the
user
- Protect internal parts - Position in
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• Fan control. This is the electric component with the control mechanism to determine the speed of the outgoing airflow.
• Grille for air input flow. There is a plastic/metal inlet grille in front of the fan to ensure that people can’t touch the fan or other stuff can get stuck in the fan.
• Grille for air output flow.
• Filter. The filter is placed to protect the internal electronics in the air curtain, and no dust comes in it resulting in a non-functioning air curtain.
• Damper. This is a plastic cover which makes sure the air comes out in a converted air stream and helps to regulate the air stream so actual separation of air is the result.
Each component contributes to the customer needs. The door heights and widths, as well as the mounting options are represented in the casing. In some cases the other components must be adjusted in size as well to fit into the casing, however most heights and widths are similar among the customers. The heating element is a module in the air curtain, a customer can choose several types varying from water to ambient cooling. Based on the customer needs that were similar, the casing’s size, heating element and the grilles don’t have to differ much. However the customers do ask for variety in the control options and the performance as well as the price level. The fan and the fan control play a major role in this, and it’s important that these components aren’t too integrated in the air curtain so the products matches the customer needs. Furthermore the customers have very different wishes regarding the design of the air curtain, at this moment this means the casing and the grilles have to be altered to satisfy the customer needs. This is unfortunate since the size of the casing doesn’t have to change much, but the casings shape and colour do require multiple types of casings. Reading from the customer similarities and differences it could very well be better to create some sort of external cover and an internal cover. So the basic air curtain has the same casing all the time. But this depends on the technical possibilities for the air curtain as well as the current product architecture, which is discussed in the next section.
6.3 Creating the function to component mapping
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inlet grille and air outlet grille. Index 2 shows how many functions are depending on other functions as well through the interrelations between components. For example the index 2 of the function “position in the room” is calculated by looking at the components that are linked to position in the room ( in this case the casing) and check the amount of functions that are linked to that component as well. So the position in the room is performed by the chunk casing, and the casing performs 2 other functions as well, so index 2 will be 1+2=3.
Table 6.1 – Function to component mapping
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In the figure below the table is presented with the interfaces for the comfort air curtain.
Table 6.2 – Interfaces in all the air curtains
The air curtain is mainly limited to spatial and material connections. As shown in the above scheme the only exception is the heating element’s and the fan’s connection to the regulator which is an informational linkage. Most of the linkages are required. Except the filter and the damper which are optional components for the product the rest are essential interfaces within the machine. For example the casing is physically attached to the air outlet grille.
More interesting is the reversibility of the interfaces. The majority of the components can be easily decoupled, but there are some exceptions. The heating element is really put deeply into the system, since the casing is build around the entire heating element in order to switch this in a later stage the complete air curtain has to be broken open. The damper and fan are both placed very deep in the casing, these are placed first during assembly and once the product is finished its not efficient anymore to take these out of the product. Yet changing the exterior parts like the grilles can be easily done and can help in creating different “visual appeals” at a later stage in the production process. Finally there is a connection between the damper and the air outlet grille. Since the damper has a specific positioning in front of the air outlet grille and is physically attached, this is harder to replace.
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little effort to change at the assembly. Offering a variety of exteriors can therefore be done relatively cheap. While changing a fan at a later stage is much harder to accomplish. Once it is put in the casing at the beginning of the production process, it will take significant production time to remove it and replace it by another fan. Therefore the fans will lead quicker to a decision to make this to order at the beginning stage, while the placement of the exterior can be postponed to the last step in production allowing more standardization within the production process.
Fixson (2005) offers a first insight in the product architecture of the air curtain, showing the possibilities for commonality and changing components in the production process. The easy to use tables offer the opportunity to check the feasibility of the proposed standardization possibilities that will be identified in the next chapter using Veenstra’s methodology. Furthermore they give the engineer a tool to describe the interactions between the different components and the functions that they perform, which can be used for communication purposes within the cross functional product development team.
6.4 Calculating the GVI and CI’s at Biddle
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Figure 6.4 – Customer values translated to components
Several topics come forward in this table. The degree of customer involvement regarding a specific chunk. For each chunk an involvement value between 1-100 is stated and averaged. Based on this the total GVI value can be calculated which is the absolute GVI. In addition the relative GVI value is calculated, this is a percentage of the total absolute GVI. For example the customer wants involvement in the size, shape and colour of the casing. It’s important to the customer his high end air curtain fits into his office building or store.
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Based on the coupling index matrix the indices can be calculated. The CI-S which shows to what extent information supplied from component 1 influences component 2. The CI-R shows to what extent component 1 is influenced by information he receives from the other components. The coupling index matrix is presented in the figure below:
Table 6.3 - Coupling Index Matrix
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In the table below the chunks are sorted based on the GVI values. The chunks with the highest GVI are most important to the customer regarding involvement and it can be assumed these will change first over time. The GVI is an indicator for the external forces of change (changing market demands), while the CI-R shows the internal forces (product architecture). Together they determine to what extent a component is likely to change over time. The CI-S is an indication to what extent these changes will have great influence on the rest of the product.
GVI CI-S CI-R
Casing 275 30 44 Heating Element 150 6 6 Fan 145 8 15 Regulator 138 4 4 Damper 80 18 13 Filter 68 20 5
Air inlet grille 40 13 15
Air outlet grille 40 16 13
Table 6.3 GVI and CI results
The goal of Biddle is to create a product platform that has a standardized design beneath it that stays more or less the same over various generations. Parts that cannot be standardized can then be modularized, which means they can be taken out and replaced by other chunks without affecting the rest of the product a lot. For example changing the regulator at the wall to determine the speed with different settings. The Martin and Ishii decision rules are used to choose which chunk to standardize and which one to modularize.
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If we look at the results from the GVI and CI analysis it is clear that the damper, filter and grills are not so important to the customer and are more suited for standardization. Yet the heating element, fan and regulator are relatively important to the customer and the customer would like involvement in these options. This can be realized by creating alternatives for these components from which the customer can choose. The heating element and the regulator have a low CI-S and CI-R and aren’t influenced by the other components so much and are good options to modularize. The fan is harder to modularize because of the slightly higher CI-R, changing a fan at the last minute will be hard because all the other components will affect the fan, and therefore limit the amount of possibilities. The casing is very complex in its current form. Since the casing is very important to the customer and influences all the other components too it is not possible to standardize or modularize this in its current state. But this means that we have to look for possibilities to split the cover into more parts in order to reduce the complexity of this chunk. Perhaps we can split the cover into multiple chunks like the CA has side panels and a front and back cover. Another idea could be to create an internal framework and an external cover, creating a standardized internal cover with all the parts. And a customer based external cover with the shape and color they want.
This can have huge advantages because you postpone the customer specific part of the product to the end of the production process. Furthermore you can create a standard framework with the damper, grills and the filter, since the customer doesn’t mind the specific properties of these components. At the end of the process the customer specific fans, heating element and casing can then be added to the products. This will be explained in the next section using the modularity drivers to explain the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach.
Creating the product platform
