Comprehensive Product Platform Planning (CP ³) framework: presenting a generalized product family model

Development of a family of products that satisfies different sectors of the market introduces significant challenges to today's manufacturing industries - from development time to aftermarket services. A product family with a common platform paradigm offers a powerful solution to these daunting challenges. The Comprehensive Product Platform Planning (CP ³) framework formulates a flexible product family model that (i) seeks to eliminate traditional boundaries between modular and scalable families, (ii) allows the formation of sub-families of products, and (iii) yield the optimal depth and number of platforms. In this paper, the CP ³ framework introduces a solution strategy that obviates common assumptions; namely (i) the identification of platform/non-platform design variables and the determination of variable values are separate processes, and (ii) the cost reduction of creating product platforms is independent of the total number of each product manufactured. A new Cost Decay Function (CDF) is developed to approximate the reduction in cost with increasing commonalities among products, for a specified capacity of production. The Mixed Integer Non-Liner Programming (MINLP) problem, presented by the CP ³ model, is solved using a novel Platform Segregating Mapping Function (PSMF). The proposed CP ³ framework is implemented on a family of universal electric motors.