Design for Open Innovation individualization-oriented product architecture planning

The continuously increased aspiration level of customers and the growing saturation of the markets are the main drivers for the development of customer individual products. In this context, the determination which of the product components shall be individualized by the customer represents a major challenge for the product development. In order to meet these challenges, the “Design for Open Innovation (DfOI) Methodology” will be presented in this extended abstract and shall support the product developer during the definition of an area of individualization within already existing products. Therefore, a five phase methodology is proposed. Each phase contains several work steps which follow sequentially. The level of detail for describing the single work steps of the DfOI Methodology has been deliberately kept low in order to focus the conceptual framework of the methodology.