Kivi – Methodical Framework for the Development of Customer-Specific Product Families based on Modular Product Structures

个性化的大趋势要求制造公司提高其产品对客户特定要求的满足程度，这将增加公司的成功，例如通过竞争优势或更好的客户忠诚度。然而，外部变化的增加与内部变化的增加是齐头并进的。差异化的优势被由变异引起的复杂性的增加所抵消，这导致总体成本更高--特别是所谓的复杂性成本。解决这一问题的唯一办法是采取相反的标准化战略，然而，这不会使产品进一步差异化，甚至个性化。虽然模块化产品体系结构的开发已经克服了在标准化和差异化之间的冲突中，对变体丰富的产品系统地由变体引起的复杂性，但当考虑到完全预定义的产品变体时，理想的客户需求的满足仍然可能过大。在文献中，特定于客户的产品调整被认为是减少过大的解决方案策略，但到目前为止，它被孤立地考虑，并且没有任何联系和集成，作为模块化产品体系结构设计中的一种可能的解决方案策略。因此，标准化和差异化之间的紧张关系达到了更深层次的考虑，其中不仅必须做出标准化或变型解决方案的决定，而且还必须考虑变型设计或完全适应客户特定要求的设计。到目前为止，文献中还没有一致的方法来支持这一点。在这一点上，本项目从开发一种方法开始，支持使用客户特定的模块进行模块化产品结构的设计，从而进一步将模块化产品体系结构发展为模块化定制的产品体系结构，以避免理想化的过大。在模块化产品体系结构的考虑中，它受制于标准化和差异化的冲突努力，这个项目增加了差异化和个性化之间的新的、矛盾的努力。新方法将使用具有足够其他研究项目数据的产品实例进行开发和测试。

The megatrend of individualization requires manufacturing companies to improve the fulfillment of customer-specific requirements by their products, which will increase the success of a company, for example through competitive advantages or better customer loyalty. However, increasing external variety goes hand in hand with increased internal variety. The advantages of differentiation are offset by the increase in variant-induced complexity, which leads to higher costs overall - especially the so-called complexity costs. The only way to counteract this is to adopt the opposite strategy of standardization, which, however, does not allow products to be further differentiated or even individualized. While the development of modular product architectures already overcomes methodically variant-induced complexity for variant-rich products in the conflict between standardization and differentiation, the ideal fulfillment of customer requirements is still likely to be oversized, when completely predefined product variants are considered. Customer-specific product adaptation as a solution strategy for reducing oversizing is considered in the literature, but so far it has been considered in isolation and without any connection and integration as a possible solution strategy in the design of modular product architectures. The tension between standardization and differentiation thereby reaches a further level of consideration, where not only a decision for a standardized or variant solution must be made, but also a consideration between variant design or a design exactly adapted to customer-specific requirements. Up to now, there is no consistent methodical support for this in the literature.At this point, this project starts by developing a method that supports the design of modular product structures with customer specific modules and thus further develops the modular product architecture to a modular-customized product architecture in order to avoid oversizing in an idealized way. In the consideration of modular product architectures, which are subject to the conflicting efforts of standardization vs. differentiation, this project adds the new, contradictory efforts between differentiation vs. individualization. The new method will be developed and tested using product examples with sufficient data of other research projects.