How do literature and start-up companies think about the decision making process regarding product architecture and product variety in early design phase? - A case study

Abstract

The thesis looks at applicability of decision making models introduced by literature in the area about product architecture and product variety, on start-up companies that are high-tech and production oriented. Decision making in the product design phase will impact on product architecture and product variety. These two areas are where the combined information and technology that comes externally from customers and internally from research are merged to create a competitive product. Both in terms of customer satisfaction and cost optimizations. Existing literature have focused on larger companies in various industries that apply algorithms and decision making frameworks to see whether the result is significantly better. It would therefore be interesting in seeing what start-ups think about these methods, whether they are interesting and applicable in the early stages of product development. The result is very interesting, because the start-up companies do care about these areas and does use a lot of decision making methods. However sometimes literature methods are not fully applicable to them because of lack of quantitative data or simply not relevant. That said, methods that offer cost control and innovative information leveraging are interesting to start-ups and they do use all the resources available to them in order to realize their vision. For Luxbright that is to make a safer world.