Standardized vs Integrated Interfaces - Assessment of Different Perspectives to Improve Aircraft Cabin Design

The aviation industry is experiencing challenges driven by megatrends such as individualization, leading to an expanded range of OEM product portfolios to meet varying airline requirements. This diversity, together with planned modifications like retrofitting, escalates operational costs and adds complexity to internal processes. To address these issues, this paper proposes leveraging modular product architectures as a strategic solution, aiming to support a broad diversity of products while minimizing internal complexity. This approach emphasizes the decoupling of modules and the establishment of standardized interfaces, fostering the communal use of modules and the creation of new product variants, thus offering economic benefits through economies of scale across the entire product family. However, the pursuit of standardized interfaces and module decoupling can inadvertently increase product weight, impacting fuel efficiency and carbon emissions. To counteract these drawbacks, the integration of lightweight design principles into the modular framework is critical, although current practices in lightweight design typically focus on individual variant optimization, often disregarding broader product diversity. This oversight results in conflicts between the modularization and lightweight design objectives. This paper presents a comprehensive interface assessment approach, aimed at reconciling the need for modularity with weight reduction demands. By classifying interfaces based on functional and structural characteristics, the proposed approach supports informed decision-making on whether to standardize an interface to enhance modularity or to pursue functional integration, minimizing material use. Such strategic interface management prioritizes design decisions that align with overarching goals of flexibility and economic efficiency.