Data Mining in Product Portfolio and Variety Management – Literature Review on Use Cases and Research Potentials

The increased global competition and the demand for individualised products confront companies with growing complexity in product portfolio and variety management. However, today's product portfolio and variant decisions are often based on the subjective experiences of individual engineers. In order to cope with the portfolio complexity and to plan and design the product programme efficiently, companies require automated, intelligent, and data-driven solutions. In this paper, the possible applications of data mining in product portfolio and variety management are elaborated and systematically analysed based on the literature. Moreover, the research gaps and future research potentials are identified. For the industry, this clarifies the opportunities of data mining as well as demonstrates starting points for its integration in their product portfolio and variety management.