PAMATRIX: A METHOD TO ASSESS PLATFORMS IN PRODUCT DEVELOPING COMPANIES
DS 49: Proceedings of NordDesign 2004 Conference, Tampere, Finland, 18.-20.08.2004
Year: 2004
Editor: Lehtonen, Timo; Pulkkinen, Antti and Riitahuhta, Asko
Author: Kristjansson, Arnar H.; Hildre, Hans-Petter
Page(s): 63 - 72
Abstract
Platforms in the context of product developing companies are used to fulfil a number of different goals. In some cases they have proven to be beneficial, while in other instances they have proven not to be. To understand how well a platform is performing, it has to be assessed in its existing industry-, market-, and company internal context Furthermore; the platform has to be assessed in line with how much it contributes to the company's specific competitive advantage strategy (CAS). The purpose of the paper is to propose a method that does this, i.e. assesses a company's platforms in reference to the industry-, market-, and company intrinsic context, as which as in reference to the company's chosen CAS. Furthermore, an important objective is to keep the method easy to use, and base it on explicit or tacit data that already exist in the company. A basic assumption is that companies have a great deal of valuable data that isn't utilized; it has to be documented and presented in a way that converts it to useful information. The method - which we each the Platform Assessment Matrix (PAMatrix) - consists of a matrix that analyzes the platforms of a company from different viewpoints. By using the method, stakeholders can more easily derive to general strategic action plans for each individual platform. The method is still in creation, and a number of iterations are still needed. The basis is however in place and a number of industry ease studies in the pipeline.
Keywords: Platform assessment, platform management, platform development, platform strategy, platform decision making