Grants to fund the project „Utility driven design of product architectures for technical products in the B2B segment"

A grant proposal written by Prof. Dr. Daniel Wentzel (MAR) and Prof. Dr. Günther Schuh (WZL) to fund the project „ Utility driven design of product architectures for technical products in the B2B segment " has been approved by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, short DFG. For two years, interdisciplinary research aiming at the development of a methodology for the early design stages of technical products that allow firms to launch product architectures that match the required market variety will be conducted.

While complex and large product programs often have positive effects from a customer’s perspective because a large number of variants raises the possibility to find a product, which exactly fits ones needs, there are also drawbacks. That is, a large number of seemingly similar variants of the same product can lead to confusion and information overload for customers. This comes alongside with effects for product development and manufacturing, which are affected by complexity costs that result from a high number of variants. Thus, the main research question for this project is: How many and which variants should a firm offer to reduce complexity costs while still fulfilling relevant customer needs?