MB Collaborations | Blog EN

Implement customer requirements with an intelligent modular product structure, reduce costs and drastically reduce product configuration. VDMA reports about an average improvement potential of up to 10% in relation to the overall business result and speaks of potential engineering savings of 15% in plant construction, as well as a drastic reduction in development times.

According to a study by the VDMA, modular systems are widely applied in organizations and are already used by 88% of respondents. The goals are to reduce development time and development costs while offering your customers more product options than before. 

Product variants are increasing and product life cycles are becoming shorter and shorter. The media is rife with reports on these developments, such as articles published in the Tagesspiegel or PC Magazin, which focus on the increasing pace with which new smartphones and electronic devices are launched. But the speed is also accelerating in mechanical and plant engineering. This is also shown by a study of the Scientific Services of the Bundestag:

A study by the German Institute for Media and Competence Research revealed that more than 55% of companies already use e-learning and another 13% plan to use e-learning as a tool for employee instruction to disseminate knowledge in a targeted and flexible way. These findings were confirmed by a Bitkom survey in the summer of this year. Read our article to find out how you can use e-learning successfully in your modularization projects to ensure efficient development of modular products.

Modularization is sold as a panacea

Modular product development is the magic pill that solves all your problems? Advertising messages that trumpet the advantages of modularization may leave you with that impression. In reality, however, modular development, like any other development strategy, has both weaknesses and strengths, as well as risks and advantages.

Buy new a software to successfully modularize your products and then magically develop modular product architectures? In the MB Collaborations blog you will learn:

• why these software solutions do not lead to the desired success in the development of modular systems and product architectures despite seductive advertising messages.
• what strategic considerations should be made before investing in a software.

CMII Europe 2014: Modular product development with goal to develop modular systems as an answer for individual requirements and cost pressure

General managers and founders of MB Collaborations, Daniel Mund and Ingo Bögemann, will be speaking at the morning session C on day 2 (21.06.2016) at 7:45 AM about the topic "Getting modular systems to work - does your organization need an update for the app modularization to work?"

Up to 20,000 parts per machine, less than 100 produced machines per year, a machine lifecycle of 40+ years. These are the key figures of a larger midsized enterprise in the business of industrial plants for food packaging. A business with certainly different constraints compared to large automotive manufacturers named often in context of modular strategies. Therefore, the focus of the modularization project was not set on achieving economies of scale in a purchasing division beyond 100,000 units.