A new methodology to analyze the functional and physical architecture of existing products for an assembly oriented product family identification Literature-based identification of success-relevant influencing factors of distributed product development Literature-based identification of success-rele

In today’s business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbroken. Due to this development, the need of agile and reconfigurable production systems emerged to cope with various products and product families. To design and optimize production systems as well as to choose the optimal product matches, product analysis methods are needed. Indeed, most of the known methods aim to analyze a product or one product family on the physical level. Different product families, however, may differ largely in terms of the number and nature of components. This fact impedes an efficient comparison and choice of appropriate product family combinations for the production system. A new methodology is proposed to analyze existing products in view of their functional and physical architecture. The aim is to cluster these products in new assembly oriented product families for the optimization of existing assembly lines and the creation of future reconfigurable assembly systems. Based on Datum Flow Chain, the physical structure of the products is analyzed. Functional subassemblies are identified, and a functional analysis is performed. Moreover, a hybrid functional and physical architecture graph (HyFPAG) is the output which depicts the similarity between product families by providing design support to both, production system planners and product designers. An illustrative example of a nail-clipper is used to explain the proposed methodology. An industrial case study on two product families of steering columns of thyssenkrupp Presta France is then carried out to give a first industrial evaluation of the proposed approach. © Elsevier Peer-review responsibility of the scientific committee of the 28th CIRP Design Conference 2018. Abstract Increasingly complex products and processes, tougher international competition and increasing customer requirements are some of the trends leading to the current organizational change. Companies are more and more conducting their development activities across locations and national borders. The aim is to optimally exploit the potential created by the changed environment and to gain an advantage over the competitors. Furthermore, companies are facing additional challenges, such as increased organizational effort, a lack of personal contact and the resulting communication delays. In order to be able to react flexibly to the changed boundary conditions, companies are increasingly trying to implement agile measures. The implementation of these measures and the addressing of the heterogeneity of the distributed development environments increase the complexity of the entire product development process. In order to successfully master this complexity in the transformation process, the question arises which influencing factors are decisively contributing to the success of distributed development processes. This contribution is therefore dedicated to the literature-based identification of the success-relevant influencing factors in distributed product development. In addition, the success-relevant influencing factors were assigned to the dimensions people, technology and organization to further be able to investigated what effect changing an influencing factor has on the dimensions and thus also on the influencing factors classified under them. Finally, the collection of success-relevant influencing factors indicates which influencing factors must be considered when adapting processes, methods and tools as part of the operation system of the product development process to the prevailing distributed development situation. Additionally, it must be considered that the transformation process can only be successful if the integrated consideration of the three dimensions technology, organization as well as the individual people affected by change as the center of product development is taken into account. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CIRP Design Conference. Abstract Increasingly complex products and processes, tougher international competition and increasing customer requirements are some of the trends leading to the current organizational change. Companies are more and more conducting their development activities across locations and national borders. The aim is to optimally exploit the potential created by the changed environment and to gain an advantage over the competitors. Furthermore, companies are facing additional challenges, such as increased organizational effort, a lack of personal contact and the resulting communication delays. In order to be able to react flexibly to the changed boundary conditions, companies are increasingly trying to implement agile measures. The implementation of these measures and the addressing of the heterogeneity of the distributed development environments increase the complexity of the entire product development process. In order to successfully master this complexity in the transformation process, the question arises which influencing factors are decisively contributing to the success of distributed development processes. This contribution is therefore dedicated to the literature-based identification of the success-relevant influencing factors in distributed product development. In addition, the success-relevant influencing factors were assigned to the dimensions people, technology and organization to further be able to investigated what effect changing an influencing factor has on the dimensions and thus also on the influencing factors classified under them. Finally, the collection of success-relevant influencing factors indicates which influencing factors must be considered when adapting processes, methods and tools as part of the operation system of the product development process to the prevailing distributed development situation. Additionally, it must be considered that the transformation process can only be successful if the integrated consideration of the three dimensions technology, organization as well as the individual people affected by change as the center of product development is taken into account.