Based on these questions sales and engineering must come to a common conclusion what the product features are and what are the allowed feature values and what are the feature value combinations. These features are known also as customer questions.
In our solution, VariSuite, these customer questions, or features, are modelled as parameters.
To succeed with sophisticated Product Management, these parameters needs to be managed globally, which means these parameters can be used in multiple products or product families and modules or components.
Parameters needs to be managed also so, that they have different status or lifecycle. The status will manage parameter usage in current products and ensure that it will retire when some parameters are no longer needed in the offering or they’ve replaced by another one.
Parameters can vary, they can be value lists, ranges, single or multi-valued variables.
When adding parameters to product model, parameter values can be refined, this means that parameter values can be limited from global parameter values in desired specific product.
The constraints are added between allowed parameter combinations for example: with Forestry Trailer product: the payload value is requiring and/or limiting the necessary breaking power, and vice versa.
Coming in the next blog-posts – where we’re opening the way how Variantum guides our customers and partners towards easier Configurable Products:
If you’re looking for help with modularizing or parametrizing your product family, do not hesitate to contact us.