Issues in Automotive Product Platform Strategies

Product platform strategies have advantages and disadvantages. Key automotive platform issues include economies of scale and potential loss of brand differentiation. Platform strategies can be defined for components/systems, manufacturing, product development teams, and company capability/knowledge. Concepts and tools that support platform definition and commonality include function structures, modularity matrices, product architecting and decomposition, and optimization methods. Managerial concerns include organizational dynamics, strategy, technology and cost, and support systems. These issues are reviewed and discussed. The paper concludes with a summary, observations, and some questions about platform strategies.