Methodical Development of Modular Product Families: Developing High Product Diversity in a Manageable Way

This book focuses on the development of multi-variant products using modular product structures and thus addresses the reduction of complexity from a product development perspective. These modular product structures allow for a greater variety of demand with a smaller, internal variety of components and processes. As a supplement to the common product development methodology, the necessary basics of modularity and variant diversity as well as the corresponding methods are presented comprehensively. The book thus summarizes the current state of science as well as the research activities of the past ten years at the Institute of Product Development and Design Technology at the TU Hamburg-Harburg.

The target groups

This book is aimed at product developers and decision makers in practice. Science is offered a helpful reference book and interested engineering students can immerse themselves in the development of modular product families with the necessary basics.

This book is a translation of the original German 1^st edition Methodische Entwicklung modularer Produktfamilien by Dieter Krause & Nicolas Gebhardt, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2018. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dieter Krause studied production technology/mechanical engineering and received his doctorate at the Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. This was followed by leading positions as design manager, technical manager and managing director in mechanical and plant engineering. Since 2005 he has been head of the Institute for Product Development and Design Technology at the TU Hamburg-Harburg. He is a member of the Scientific Society for Product Development (WiGeP).

Dipl.-Ing. Nicolas Gebhardt studied product development and mechanical engineering at the TU Hamburg-Harburg. Since 2011 he is a research assistant at the Institute for Product Development and Design Technology at the TU Hamburg-Harburg in the research group methodical development of modular product families.