Evaluation of design alternatives in collaborative development and production of modular products

In the globally competitive business environment, collaborative product development has become an important strategy for enterprises to reduce risks and enhance their competitiveness. The planning phase becomes more significant and complicated when utilizing external resources to determine a product solution to achieve customer satisfaction and business goals. The decision process for assessing design alternatives depends on the tradeoffs between quality, time, and cost. In this research, we propose a framework for collaborative product development and production of modular products. It aims at linking customer requirements, generating design alternatives, and then evaluating and selecting these choices to determine the optimum solution. They are considered from both design aspects and manufacturing concerns. Product strategy is discussed as the most important factor in the evaluation process. Further, a practical application of a system-on-a-chip product planning process was carried out to demonstrate the completeness and benefit of our proposed framework.