The new paradigm of mass customization has emerged in industry and is transforming markets by making product variety affordable with the ultimate goal of achieving mass production costs of individually customized goods and services. Achieving this goal requires a methodology for providing product variety without losing the commonality of parts needed to maintain the economies of scale inherent in mass production. In addition to the use of modularity, an emerging complementary approach is to develop a product platform consisting of common components and processes from which a family of variant products is generated. Although product platforms have successfully improved economies of scale and scope for large companies, it is questionable whether similar success can be achieved within small companies that produce highly customized products at low volume, and the focus of this research is to develop a product platform and design methodology for low volume, highly customized products. An additional focus is to determine if the ubiquitous World Wide Web can facilitate customization and improve the marketing of such products.

The dissertation presents a methodology that addresses research embodied by three fundamental questions: (1) in what ways can platform-based product development benefit small companies who produce highly customized products at low volumes? (2) how should product platform design differ from current methods for such products, and what factors are important for defining the best platform design strategy? and (3) how can the World Wide Web be used to facilitate customized product design for low volume products? The methodology addresses these questions by building upon existing research regarding product platform portfolio design utilizing so called bottom-up platform design techniques. A detailed methodology is presented for transforming an existing product line of low volume highly customized product into a virtual product platform portfolio through targeted component redesign. In addition, an algorithm is presented for implementing a virtual product platform portfolio through a web-based interface that allows the early incorporation of custom design requirements into the design process and includes strategies for designing custom features on demand through an engineer-to-order approach. Implementing a virtual product platform portfolio improves the specification of low volume highly customized product as it avoids the premature ordering of inventory yet allows for quick response to custom requests.

The design of yokes for mounting motor actuators on valves for use in the nuclear power industry is used as the example throughout the research. This example is highly representative of the type of product that is the focus of the methodology. The example is presented in detail such that all aspects of the methodology are demonstrated.