Design for Product Program

1
Design for Product Program
Silje Stormo Silje.stormo_at_immtek.ntnu.no
Purpose Tools and methods are needed to manage
and develop complex product assortments My aim
is to test, improve and develop methods to
describe (represent) and get an overview of
product program characteristics. Focus is the
fit and relations between the different levels
from strategic decisions to operational details.

Topic Product assortments in companies are
growing. This growth is usually due to market
(external) demands, but the production and other
internal stakeholders want to have less
complexity and more economies of scale. This has
been tried handled with product platforms and
modularization. Focus has been on improving
internal benefits to cope with external demand.
Different methods have been developed for this
purpose (e.g. commonality plan and
differentiation plan which looks at
characteristics such as commonality and variety
across different products.) Another
characteristic of product program is flexibility.
A business should be able to change its product
assortment as well as its strategies to changing
markets and technologies. Relations within
these different strategic levels on both external
and internal sides have not yet been well
examined.

• Research questions
• How can commonality and variety in a product
  assortment be visualised?
• Which methods and tools are used and what is
  lacking?
• How can flexibility, variety and commonality be
  measured?
• Which tools and methods can be used to analyse a
  product assortment on behalf of product program
  mindset?
• Are the strategies of a company related to the
  real product assortment?
• Theories
• Product platform
• Modularization
• Strategy management