Assessing Design Strategies in Modular Product Development

Bing-Hsuan Wu, Chung-Chuan Wang, Chung-Shing Wang, Ching-Hu Yang

In the process of product development, it is essential to grasp customer preference and reduce development cost accurately. How to use product modularization to improve sharing of components in mass production, to meet the demand of consumers by the advantage of product diversity, is an important topic worth discussing. In this study, the modular architecture of product components was established by the domain mapping matrix. First, fuzzy Delphi method was introduced to evaluate the criteria of customer requirements. Secondly, design structure matrix method categorized the customer requirements to the goals of design and parts to the modular groups. Finally, analytic network process based on super matrix were used to find the weights for modular parts and assess the design strategies for a product development. Based on the research, three upright fitness bicycles were designed to realize the concept of product diversity.