A method for architecting product platforms

Consider a group of products sharing common parts and assemblies. The produ cts in question we call a product family, and the common elements, the plat form. In this paper, we present a method for designing product platforms an d the derived family that takes into consideration both the technical perfo rmance requirements as well as the cost of the product family. The design o f a platform-based product family is formulated as a general optimization p roblem in which the advantages of designing a common platform must be balan ced against the constraints of the individual product variants and constrai nts of the family as a whole. This optimization approach forms the basis fo r a practical implementation as an interactive, team-based negotiation mode l for designing a family of interplanetary spacecraft based on a common pla tform. The approach is used to consider and specify different subsystems th at could be made common to all the missions. It is also used to evaluate th e impact of those platform design decisions on the performance of the produ ct family, and thus be able to select from among feasible platform designs.