Given the Industry 4.0 trend towards smaller lot sizes and large product families, there is a need to increase the design efficiency in terms of cost and lead time. Design decisions taken in the early or conceptual design phases are shown to have the greatest impact on the final product cost, however the choices and trade-offs are often made in an ad-hoc way. This paper presents a structured methodology for formalizing early stage product design knowledge, which is key for designing and evaluating new variants in a product family in the early stages of the design process.
