Platform products development and supply chain configuration: An integrated perspective

Platform Products Development (PPD) has been recognized as a formidable approach to effective Mass Customization (MC) for striking the balance between the necessary variety of end-products and the cost to meet the customer requirements in the highly competitive marketplace. Although it is generally acknowledged that it is more effective to consider PPD strategies and design decisions of the associated supply chain simultaneously, little attention and interests have been put on this problem. In this chapter, we conceptualize the problem of integrated configuration of platform products and supply chain and formulate it as a non-linear mathematical problem. Analysis of the model yields two properties, namely single sourcing and absolute replacement. These two properties form the basis of our solution procedure for the problem. The proposed model and solution procedure are applied to a simple numerical example and the computational results are presented and discussed.