Variety outside, simplicity inside.
Modularisation lets you offer the market rich variation while keeping the internal cost of complexity low: rich ends from simple means, a pattern found everywhere in natural systems. We have spent 30 years helping companies structure their product programmes this way, from first diagnosis to trained-up engineering organisations.
You may recognise some of these.
Modularisation starts to matter when product variety - good for customers - begins multiplying cost behind the scenes. Signals we often meet:
Part numbers keep growing: and every one must be developed, tested, drawn, prototyped, sourced, transported, forecasted and stored.
No one can say what the variety actually costs, or which of it customers truly value.
Two product programmes do functionally the same job with entirely different parts.
EU's right to repair and other sustainability demands - repair, upgrade, reuse - are hard to meet with today’s product structure.
A way of thinking, brought into your organisation.
Modularisation is primarily a way of thinking, not a fixed method, it looks different in every company. We start from your need and your product programme, and involve management early, because most of the company ends up involved in - or affected by - a modularised program.
We diagnose the potential.
A first diagnosis of your current product programme: the potential for modularisation and the readiness of the organisation. Commonality analyses show how products differ; cost-of-complexity analyses reveal how part numbers drive cost; customer-needs analyses show how well the range covers the market.
We design many configurations from few components.
With your engineers we use the depth and width of the product structure - subcomponents that combine efficiently, and similarities across the range that let parts be reused between products - to create many configurations from a few components.
We train the organisation that will carry it.
From engineers to management, we build the modular thinking the program needs to last: the same way SAM supported Scania in developing its principles for modular design, central to the success of the product.
What modular thinking earns.
A product architecture that offers variety outward and reuses components inward.
A clear read on what complexity costs, and which of it earns its keep.
Products designed to be repaired, upgraded and reused: longer lifecycles, less waste.
An organisation trained in modular thinking, from engineering to management.
The instruments behind the work.
How we make modular thinking tangible inside the engagement.
Principlay: Modular Production
A simulation where teams experience the effects of a modular product programme across the whole value chain.
See method →Management by Means
Paired with modularisation, the key to high customisation with short lead times, high quality and low costs.
See method →Where this work has led.
Transferring the portfolio into a modular product programme and adapting the product development organisation.
Embedded and widespread training of engineers resulting in new product structures and improved multi-site co-operation.
Using modular design to merge two technically different, but functionally similar product programmes and organisations.
How much variety could you afford tomorrow?
Tell us about your product programme and where complexity bites. A first diagnosis shows the potential - and the readiness - for modular thinking.