ICIS '00 Proceedings of the twenty first international conference on Information systems
Product platform design and customization: Status and promise
Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing - SPECIAL ISSUE: Platform product development for mass customization
Designing a Family of Development-Intensive Products
Management Science
Product Line Selection and Pricing with Modularity in Design
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Product Line Design with Component Commonality and Cost-Reduction Effort
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Delayed multiattribute product differentiation
Decision Support Systems
FS'07 Proceedings of the 8th Conference on 8th WSEAS International Conference on Fuzzy Systems - Volume 8
Make-to-order or make-to-stock decision by a novel hybrid approach
Advanced Engineering Informatics
Association rule mining for product and process variety mapping
International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
The Value of Component Commonality in a Dynamic Inventory System with Lead Times
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Journal of Engineering and Technology Management
Managing diagrammatic models with different perspectives on product information
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing
Evaluating Heuristics Used When Designing Product Costing Systems
Management Science
A market mechanism for software component reuse: opportunities and barriers
Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Electronic Commerce
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Product variety in many industri es has increased steadily throughout this century. Component sharing-using the same version of a component across multiple products-is increasingly viewed by companies as a way to offer high variety in the marketplace while retaining low variety in their operations. Yet, despite the popularity of component sharing in industry, little is known about how to design an effective component-sharing strategy or about the factors that influence the success of such a strategy. In this paper we critically examine component sharing using automotive front brakes as an example. We consider three basic questions: (1) What are the key drivers and trade-offs of component-sharing decisions? (2) How much variation exists in actual component-sharing practice? and (3) How can this variation be explained? To answer these questions, we develop an analytic model of component sharing and show through empirical testing that this model explains much of the variation in sharing practice for automotive braking systems. We find that the optimal number of brake rotors is a function of the range of vehicle weights, sales volume, fixed component design and tooling costs, variable costs, and the variation in production volume across the models of the product line. We conclude with a discussion of the general managerial implications of our findings.