Modular product development - mapping and prioritizing the driving factors by interpretive structural modelling

Modular product development strategy facilitates developing new products tailored to emerging markets globally. It has broad implications for product performance, product variety, product change, manufacturability and assemble ability. However, it is not an easy task to adopt such strategy as many drivers affect its implementation. Therefore, before its implementation, it is imperative that manufacturer understand the driving factors of modular product design. This research identifies 18 driving factors, which are necessary to boost up modular product design and development. These factors are identified and sorted out through extensive literature surveys and experts opinions from industrial personnel and academicians. Thereafter, the interdependencies among the factors are classified as high, medium and low through the use of Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). The ISM diagraph shows that modularity factors can be classified into six levels. Factor "Product development knowledge" falls at the lowest level of ISM diagraph indicating that it has the highest driving power for modular product development strategy. On the other hand, factors such as "Component lead time", "Component availability", "Inventory management" and "Product life cycle" are the factors with highest dependency.