Designing Platforms for Customizable Products in Markets With Non-Uniform Demand

The Product Platform Constructal Theory Method enables a designer to develop product platforms for customizable products while handling issues of multiple levels of commonality, multiple product specifications, and the inherent tradeoffs between platform extent and performance. The method is limited, however, by its reliance on an assumption that demand in the market is uniform for each product variant. This is a critical limitation, as the method does not adequately model the fragmented demand inherent in markets of customizable products. The authors address this limitation in this paper by infusing several different demand modeling techniques in order to develop an augmented PPCTM that is capable of handling any type of non-uniform demand scenario. The approach is illustrated through the design of a product platform for a line of customizable pressure vessels for several non-uniform demand scenarios. Several insights into the relationship between the structure of the market’s demand and the architecture of the product platform are drawn from the results of this work.