Commonization

Commonization is the process of identifying and consolidating similar or duplicative elements across systems, products, or processes to create a single, shared representation or component set. The goal is to reduce duplication, standardize interfaces, and improve interoperability and efficiency across an organization or ecosystem.

In software development, commonization involves extracting common functionality into shared libraries, modules, or services that can be reused across projects or platforms. This reduces maintenance costs, aligns behavior, and simplifies updates, but it often requires careful refactoring, clear interface design, versioning, and governance to manage dependencies and evolution.

In manufacturing, product design, and procurement, commonization aims to standardize components and features across product lines. By using common parts and interfaces, companies can lower the variety of stock-keeping units, streamline supply chains, and achieve economies of scale, while maintaining the necessary flexibility for variation where required.

In data management and IT governance, commonization supports the establishment of data standards, interoperable APIs, and shared data models. This enables easier data exchange, integration, and analytics across systems, reducing duplication of data and improving consistency.

The process typically includes identifying candidates with high duplication and low variability, designing abstractions or shared services, implementing with stable, versioned interfaces, piloting the approach, and enforcing governance and change management. Benefits include efficiency, consistency, and faster development, while challenges encompass over-generalization, performance trade-offs, compatibility, and organizational change.