Modularity as a source of comprehensive innovation: its concurrent roles in improving agility and reducing leadtime

Implementation of modularity, which is coupled with application or platform strategy enables vertical product line extension with the use of commonality to satisfy dynamic fast-changing customer preferences. Modularity has crucial role in hardening positive correlations between platform of product and models, and/or its derivative models, and simultaneously increasing of agility. This research focuses on automotive industry with the objective to investigate concurrent roles of modularity in improving agility of manufacturing and reducing manufacturing lead time. Our findings provide support to propositions of this research. In investigating the effect or modularity towards agility, we find that by playing on the various possibilities for combining modules, it is possible to assembly on a single flexible production line: 1) a single model in several variants, as long as production is organized in such a way as to ensure the coordination of the variety; 2) several models whereas each of which is a variation of a single plat form; and 3) customized models simply by rearranging the different variations of the modules. With respect to these findings, there is evidence that increasing of manufacturing agility leads to reduction of manufacturing lead time, which is a significant factor to build corporate competency.