Companies operating in the field of industrial plant engineering need to become more efficient in the development of highly customized plants in order to hold out against increasing global competition. The development of modular product architectures or simply modularization is an approach to variety management that enables benefits for customized plants regarding the competitive factors cost, quality, and time. Several researchers dedicated their work to modularization which resulted in a number of existing methods aimed at supporting the development of modular product architectures. However, very little research has been conducted on modularization regarding the specific needs of low volume, high variety products that characterize industrial plants. The research within this thesis explored to what extent the existing methods aimed at supporting the development of modular product architectures are suitable for the application at a company operating in the field of industrial plant engineering.

Since the literature in this research area lacked a clear and widely accepted vocabulary, an unambiguous terminology was defined at first (RQ1). Thereafter, a case study was employed to explore the requirements a manufacturer of wood-processing plants places on a method to support the development of modular product architectures (RQ2). A total number of thirteen requirements were derived from the case study reflecting the needs of a company operating in the field of industrial plant engineering. Subsequently, a literature review was carried out to identify the existing methods aimed at supporting the development of modular product architectures (RQ3). Hereby, nineteen methods were identified and characterized. Ultimately, the requirements derived from the case study were used as evaluation criteria to assess the existing methods (RQ4).

This thesis contributes to the theoretical understanding of the concepts associated with the development of modular product architectures. The overview and characterization of methods provides information for everyone interested in the methodological support for modularization. Furthermore, the requirements analysis at a manufacturer of wood-processing plants gave insights into the specific needs of a company operating in the field of industrial plant engineering. The advantages and shortcomings of the individual methods with regards to the requirements are presented in an overview. The analysis showed that none of the existing methods meet all of the imposed requirements fully. The best score a method achieved is 77%. Therefore, an application of the existing methods at a company operating in the field of industrial plant engineering is not possible without constraints. The combination and further development of existing methods was suggested as area of future research to provide a satisfactory methodological support for the development of modular product architectures in industrial plant engineering.