Product Family

Allows you to define a Product Family hierarchy to express a configurable platform that can be viewed and edited in the Product Family context.

The Product Family module contains the following features:

• Organizational structure for a Product Family consisting of Product Models that can be further organized by Product Groups.

• Matrix Editor to view and manage the Product Family, where you can work with both the configurable structure and the variant definitions of the Product Models.

Product Family module enables you to build a family of products against a configurable product based on the Options and Variants capability. This starts with the Product Family top level that is associated with a configurable part that it represents. A Product Model is used to define the product or offering that is made available to the market or is used to represent and validate a common set of offerings. Product Models can be organized using the Product Model Groups. These Product Model Groups can be used to show different branding, feature alignment, or other market needs.

Individual members of a Product Family typically share common parts and subassemblies and are built on a common product platform. Building products on a common platform can help minimize manufacturing costs and complexity and help facilitate the ability to rapidly develop a variety of products based on an evolving set of market needs and requirements.

The Product Family module comprises the following capabilities:

• Product Family: Allows you to develop a hierarchical family for a configurable structure that can use Product Models that represent what is available to the market and Product Groups that can further be used to organize Product Models. Product Models have one or more variant specifications that define the choices used for these configurations.

• Matrix Editor: Matrix Editor is a tool that allows you to view, compare, and define variant specifications in a convenient matrix user interface.

• Configuration and Change Management Capabilities: Configuration and change management is a process that captures the evolution of a product across its entire life cycle, from concept to retirement. This allows you to capture product configuration information and manage product change to turn market requirements, customer requests, and innovative ideas into marketable products.

• Variant Baseline: A variant baseline is a specialized baseline that captures the configuration of a product and allows you to manage the development of prototypes.

• Project Planning: Product Family module provides the Project Planning capabilities in Matrix Editor to view the plan information for a set of module variants.

The Product Family capabilities are available to you only when:

This extends the capabilities associated with the Platform Structures License profile, such as Product Model, Matrix Editor, Variant Baseline, and so on.