Towards a Suite of Problems for Comparison of Product Platform Design Methods: A Proposed Classification

This paper presents the status of an ongoing project to develop a comprehensive suite of test problems suitable for comparing methods for scale-based product platform design. Despite a growing body of work in the area, there is no adequate set of testbed example problems for product platform design and benchmarking. A lack of consensus as to exactly what scale-based platform design entails has also hampered comparison of methods. In order to make a comprehensive test suite, we first need to define what different capabilities of platform design methods should be tested. To further this end, a classification scheme for example problems for scale-based platform design is presented. This simple taxonomy classifies example problems on the basis of two criteria: selection of platform architecture and incorporation of market demand. A brief review of examples from the literature shows that the existing examples are useful to test only a few of the capabilities of platform design methods. A new extension of an existing example, the design of a family of universal electric motors, is presented to test capabilities not covered by the existing set. This extended example is the first in our suite of examples.