A Multi-Agent System for Recommending Customized Families of Products

2. Background

A product family is a group of related products based on a product platform, facilitating mass customization by providing a variety of products for different market segments cost-effectively (Simpson et al. 2005). A product platform is the set of features, components or subsystems that remain constant from product to product, within a given product family. A successful product family depends on how well the trade-off between the economic benefits and performance losses incurred from having a shared platform are managed. There are two recognized approaches to product family design (Simpson et al., 2001): (1) a top-down (proactive platform) approach and (2) a bottom-up (reactive redesign) approach. In the top-down approach, a company’s strategy provides a guide line for developing a family of products based on a product platform and its derivatives. Meanwhile, the bottom-up approach is focused on redesigning and/or consolidating a group of distinct products to standardize components for sharing and reusing. In platform-based product development, two common types for product families are module-based product family and scale-based product family (Simpson et al., 2001). Products in a module-based product family are obtained by adding, substituting, and/or removing one or more modules from the platform. In a scale-based product family, products are created by scaling one or more variables related to the platform design to satisfy a variety of market niches.