Cost-Effects of Product Modularity – An Approach to Describe Manufacturing Costs as a Function of Modularity

Abstract

In recent years modularization has been used to solve the trade-off between the diversity of variety and the effort to optimize product complexity or product standardization. In the context of the implementation of an optimal product strategy and the conduction or extension of a modularization concept, it is required to evaluate the costs to support engineering decisions. The outcome of this paper is an approach to support modularization decisions of an engineer. With it, a structured procedure is introduced to identify factors which influence the costs and which depend on the product modularity.