Target-oriented modularization--addressing sustainability design goals in product modularization

Through modularization, a large range of sustainability goals can be addressed in design, e.g. environmentally friendly end-of-life or improved MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) processes. The development of methods for product modularization raised increasing interest in recent years. However, published methods for product modularization still lack of flexibility and standardization. Numerous methods have been developed that are defined for one or a given list of design goals. As a result, it is still difficult for engineers to find and apply the right method for a defined set of design goals. In this paper, the field of modular product design methods has been analyzed with the aim to develop a Target-oriented Modularization Method that allows defining modular product structure according to user-defined design goals. The introduced method is demonstrated on the example of a Garrett GT2860R turbocharger.