← Business Models: Core (all topics)
Shared-capacity & platform manufacturing
What it is
Designing one production system to make many variants - a vehicle platform underpinning several models, a moulding line retooled between products, a flexible line running different SKUs. The asset is fixed; the tooling or configuration changes
It converts a dedicated capital commitment into a shared one, so utilisation is pooled across products rather than depending on any single one
Impact on industries
- Spreads fixed cost across several products, so a variant that would not justify its own line becomes viable
- Shortens development time and cost for each new variant, since the underlying engineering is already validated
- Pools demand risk - weakness in one product is offset by another running on the same asset, which stabilises utilisation
- Tooling and changeover carry real cost and downtime, so flexibility is bounded and frequent switching erodes the benefit
- A design fault or obsolescence in the shared platform affects every product built on it at once