|
9
Common Platform Architecture
Identification for a set of similar products
Zahed Siddique1 and David W. Rosen2
1 School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University
of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta,
USA
Designing a family of products using a common platform approach instead
of designing single products has gained momentum in various industries.
One of the challenges faced by companies include identifying common modular
platform configuration for a set of existing similar products, which requires
development of product and process models and tools to facilitate configuration
reasoning. The purpose of this chapter is to present a configuration reasoning
framework that can be applied to identify common platform architectures.
To accomplish this objective, first representations are developed for
product architecture, then mathematical tools are developed to identify
common platform from these representations along with a re-modularization
scheme to investigate alternative architectures. Product architectures
are discrete, as such graph and set representations are used to model
product architectures. Discrete mathematical tools such as isomorphism
are then adopted and applied to identify common platform architecture.
The application of this configuration reasoning framework is illustrated
using identifying common platform architecture for a set of automotive
underbody front structures.
|
