Simplifying for savings: University-corporate collaboration develops tool that helped reduce tire product complexity at Goodyear

University-corporate collaboration develops tool that helped reduce tire product complexity at Goodyear. Today, companies are faced with pressure to increase variety in product offerings. While increasing variety and choices pleases customers and increases market share, the costs of doing so can be significant. Managing a diverse mix of products and associated components becomes complex, with impacts on performance requirements and production processes. Goodyear collaborated with the Center for e-Design to develop the fundamentals and tools to manage complexity. The center is a National Science Foundation industry or university cooperative research center. It was established in 2003 and now has six university sites and more than 30 industry members. The advantages for companies using product family or platform strategies can be significant. They enable efficient derivation of product variants to meet different market segment demands by keeping development costs and time cycles low.