Optimal component sharing in a product family by simultaneous consideration of minimum description length and impact metric

The design of an architecture for a family of products is a challenging task. Traditionally, only a single product case is considered when optimization techniques are used to define the optimum clustering of the components, or in other words the module definition for the product. This article proposes a framework to analyse multiple products of a given family and achieve an optimal module definition considering component sharing across some or all the products. The optimal sharing decision process is implemented with a dual objective function: a 'minimum description length' representation of the overall product architecture, and the 'impact metric' description of the selected components to share. An illustration example is developed for three digital cameras of the same brand and the results reveal the recommended set of components to share across the family as well as the optimal architecture for each one of the products.