Product family engineering

Do you know how sometimes when you go to the store with your family, you see different things that belong to the same family? For example, you might see different types of cereal like Frosted Flakes, Corn Flakes, and Froot Loops, but they all belong to the same family of cereals.

Product Family Engineering is like that too. When companies make things like cars, computers, or toys, they often make different versions of them that belong to the same family. This way, they can use the same parts and designs to create many different objects.

For example, let's say a toy company wants to make a new toy car. They might start by designing a basic car with four wheels, a body, and a steering wheel. Then they can use this same design to make many different toy cars in the same family. Some of them could be bigger or smaller, have different colors or wheels, or be able to do special things like light up or make sounds.

Product Family Engineering helps companies save time and money because they don't have to design everything from scratch every time they want to make a new product. They can just use the same parts and designs to create many different things. And that's why you see so many different products that belong to the same family!