The Role of Platform Architecture Characteristics in Flexible Decision-Making

The platform-based product development strategy is well-known as an efficient development methodology for high variety products in many industries. The development of a physical platform prior to the development of platform-based products receives more and more importance in industrial practice and academic research. Through the upstream development of the product platform there can be a significant time delay between the planning of a platform and the development of the final platform-based product. This time delay is even more reinforced by the fact that product platforms have a longer usage time than a single product. During this time, market dynamics can negatively affect the decisions which are made in the upstream product platform development project. Flexible decision-making within platform development projects will be therefore a key challenge to develop a successful product platform in a dynamic market environment. The influence of the different platform architecture characteristics, being one of the most crucial decisions within a platform project, is evaluated in this paper, regarding flexible decision-making. In total, five key characteristics of platform architectures are identified from literature and described. The “degree of module and component reuse” which specifies closed and open platforms, the “degree of modularization versus integration” which specifies the main function structure of the platform, the “degree of scalability” which describes the potential for scaling main functions, the “degree of commonality” which from top-down specifies the common unchanged parts across all product variants within the product family, and “the share of platform modules developed within a platform project”. Based on the case study analysis of well-known and often cited platform development publications, this study shows that a significant number of platform development decisions are affected by the different characteristics of platform architectures, in terms of flexible decision-making. Based on the findings, this paper provides a new perspective to introduce development flexibility in platform projects by using the distinct characteristics of platform architectures which support flexible decision-making.