Platform-Based Product Family Development -- Platform-Based Product Family Development -- Front-End Issues Related to Platform-Based Product Family Development -- Effective Product Platform Planning in the Front End -- Platform-Driven Development of Product Families -- Platform Concept Evaluation -- Platform Leveraging Strategies and Market Segmentation -- Product Family Positioning -- Commonality Indices for Assessing Product Families -- Optimization Methods to Support Platform-Based Product Family Development -- Methods for Optimizing Product Platforms and Product Families -- Commonality Decisions in Product Family Design -- Product Variety Optimization -- Analytical Target Cascading in Product Family Design -- Determining Product Platform Extent -- Back-End Issues Related to Platform-Based Product Family Development -- A Roadmap for Product Architecture Costing -- An Activity-Based Costing Method to Support Product Family Design -- Product Family Redesign Using a Platform Approach -- Process Platform and Production Configuration for Product Families -- Measuring Shape Commonality -- Process Parameter Platform Design to Manage Workstation Capacity -- Applications of Platform-Based Product Family Development -- Ice Scraper Product Family Development at Innovation Factory -- Architecting and Implementing Profitable Product Families and Shared Engineering Platforms -- A Case Study of the Product Design Generator -- Product Platform Management Practice at Cetetherm.

Today's highly competitive and volatile marketplace is reshaping the way many companies do business. Rapid innovation and mass customization offer a new form of competitive advantage. In response, companies like Sony, Black & Decker, and Kodak have successfully implemented strategies to design and develop an entire family of products based on a common product platform to satisfy a wide variety of customer requirements and leverage economies of scale and scope. Designing products and product families so that they may be customized for the global marketplace and achieving these goals in an abbreviated time period, while maintaining mass production efficiencies, is the key to successful manufacturing operations. Research in this area has matured rapidly over the last decade, and "Product Platform and Product Family Design: Methods and Applications" discusses how product platform and product family design can be used successfully to: - Increase variety within a product line, - Shorten manufacturing lead times, and - Reduce overall costs within a product line. The material available here serves as both a reference and a hands-on guide for researchers and practitioners devoted to the design, planning and production of families of products. Included are real-life case studies that explain the benefits of platform-based product development.