Designing Product Families

Catalog description

Product families, product platforms, mass customization, product variety, modularity, commonality, robust design, product architectures. I E (M E) 546 Designing Products Families (3) Designing Product Families is a graduate-level course generally offered in the spring. It is designed for students interested in product realization, engineering design, and manufacturing to gain an understanding of mass customization and methods for designing families of products based on modular and scalable product platforms. The transition from craft production to mass production to mass customization will be covered in this course along with methods and tools for designing robust, modular, and scalable product platforms. Platform leveraging strategies and commonality metrics will be investigated through product dissection activities, which will also be integrated with lectures on evaluating manufacturing and assembly. Several industry case studies will also be discussed in the course to examine the implications of producing a variety of products and strategies for effective mass customization and product postponement.Students interested in taking this course should be familiar with product design and manufacturing.Students are evaluated through individual and group homework assignments, in-class participation and activities, and a group project report and presentation.