A Group Technology Based Representation for Product Portfolios

Repository based applications for portfolio design offer the potential for leveraging archived design data with computational searches. Toward the development of such search tools, we present a representation for product portfolios that is an extension of an existing Group Technology (GT) coding scheme. Relevance to portfolio design is treated with a case study example of a hand held grinder design. Results of this work provide a numerical coding representation that captures function, form, material and manufacturing data for systems. This extends the current GT line work by combining these four types of design data and clarifying the use of the functional basis in a GT code. The results serve as a useful starting point for the development of portfolio design algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, that account for this combination of design information.