Managing Fluctuating Requirements by Platforms Defined in the Interface Between Technology and Product Development

Product platforms play an important role for the efficient customisation and variant forming of products in many companies. In this paper four different companies ranging from OEM to B2B suppliers have been interviewed on how they engage in technology and product development, create and maintain product platforms and how they respond to the changing requirements on the platforms and on the products and product families derived from them. The objective is to find how product platforms are used to meet the demands of efficient product customisation. The companies all have identifiable product platforms and established processes for product development. However, there are differences in how they define technology development, how the platforms are created, maintained, replaced and what the platforms contain. The introduction of new technology into the platforms and how the platforms are used from a Lean product development perspective has been of interest in the survey as reported in the paper.