A Network Based Dynamic Model for Product Family Evolution

Products evolve over time to follow new customer needs and technologies. Although the proper estimation of future products has been regarded as a critical issue for business success, it has not been widely discussed in an analytical way. Focusing on the evolution of a product family, this paper aims to develop a dynamic model which can effectively show the structural changes of a product family over time. The proposed model is based on a network representing the structural architecture of a product family. This model employs the concept of Fitness Model [1], where nodes in a certain system have their own fitness values to represent the degree of gaining edges with new nodes. The dynamic model proposed in this paper would be a basis for the estimation of product family evolution; it is potentially effective to simulate possible future structures of a product family according to different platform leveraging strategies.