Tracing of Weight Propagation for Modular Product families
Year: 2011
Editor: Eppinger, S. D., Maurer, M., Eben, K., Lindemann, U.
Author: Gumpinger, T.; Krause, D.
Section: Product Architectures
Page(s): 103-114
Abstract
Modular product strategies are very popular in product development, especially for variant-rich products where modularity benefits economies of scale due to commonality. In weight-driven sectors such as aviation, modularity is not pursued consequently. Developers fear a performance loss caused by additional design constraints and weight. This paper demonstrates a way to effectively reduce this performance deficit in lightweight modular designs. Components or modules with high sensitivity to weight propagation across the product family system are traced using a DSM-based system model. This allows specific optimization of these modules.
Keywords: Lightweight design, product families, modularity