Module based release planning for technical changes

Increasing international competition as well as profound individualization of customer requirements are in the present time only manageable if companies make systematical use of synergies by product platforms and “volume bundling”effects for components of various products. Latest surveys outline the fact that producing companies restructure their mechatronic products in modular product architectures. This is supported by the availability of multiple approaches for defining modular product architectures. However, the wide range of available modularization approaches does not answer the question of how flexible modules must be in their further lifecycle regarding changes and how release-cycles have to be defined. Studies imply that more than 50% of the changes made to a product containing mechatronic systems are conducted after the start of production. In the absence of early planning this leads to increasing complexity and dissipation of resources. The success of the modular product architectures after implementation thus is largely dependent on consequent and early release planning. This paper outlines a novel approach to implement release planning during the design of modular product architectures. By thoroughly planning modules and product releases whilst setting up the modular product architecture, a profound base for the planning and future realization of the releases is set. Moreover, this approach is extended in order to cover the identification of the optimal introduction point of a technical change.