HOME: House Of Modular Enhancement—a Tool for Modular Product Redesign

Abstract

Product modularization aims to improve the overall design, manufacturing, operational, and post-retirement characteristics of products by designing or redesigning the product architectures. A successful modular product can assist the reconfiguration of products, while reducing the lead-time of design and manufacturing and improving the ability for upgrading, maintenance, customization and recycling. This paper presents a new modular design method called the House Of Modular Enhancement (HOME) for product redesign. Information from various aspects of the product design, including functional requirements, product architecture and life cycle requirements, is incorporated in the method to help ensure that a modularized product would achieve the objectives. The HOME method has been implemented in a software system. A case study will be presented to illustrate the HOME method and the software.