Product Architecture Development as Means to Achieve Corporate Strategy

Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Seminar: "Product Architecture Development as Means to Achieve Corporate Strategy"Dr. Katja Holtta-OttoAssistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts DartmouthABSTRACT: Product architecture related platform and modularity choices affect the product design process, supply chain, manufacturing, etc. Product architecture is the key technical influence on the overall corporate strategy at the executive level. In this talk, I'll make the case that organization architecture, outsourcing, new markets, rapid adoption of new technology, and cost positions are all largely determined by the product architecture, and I will demonstrate the means for R&D to support and enable a corporate strategy. I will review a method I developed that assesses the support a platform provides an executive corporate strategy. This necessarily involves not just one or two evaluation criteria typically used by others, but a comprehensive set. I have formed method that includes criteria from six areas: customer needs, complexity, flexibility, organization, product variety, and after sales. Depending on the executive vision for the company, a platform should assess higher or lower on different subsets of these metrics. Among the assessments, I have found that a key problem is the inability to analyze and verify the product variety demanded of a product strategy. For example, often a strategy will necessitate a modular design, where alternatives and future derivatives are made through incorporation of different sized and performing modules. I have found often it is difficult to ensure the design will work as planned since there are so many product options, sometimes millions, to model and verify. Such systems are impossible to validate through builds and tests. To address this problem I am currently developing requirements-based system-modeling method, to validate unbuilt variants through interpolation among the demonstration built units. The goal is to model system performance virtually, both in the early phases of product development and also in the final design verification phases. THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2007, GERONTOLOGY BUILDING (GER) ROOM 309, 10:00-11:00 AM

Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 309

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Georgia Lum