Addressing the impact of high levels of product variety on complexity in design and manufacture

Abstract

Management of complexity arising from high levels of product variety is a critical problem in the automotive and other industries. In the premium vehicle sector, this is particularly important with customer expectation of personalized products. The levels of resultant complexity in business operations, from product development to supply, lead to erosion in profitability and/or a higher price for the consumer. An integrated framework to analyse variety, complexity, and its associated costs to guide product development decisions is not well developed. This paper presents a high-level design for variety framework to inform decisions on variety and complexity, underpinned by cost and revenue analysis. The work potentially has much wider application than just in the premium vehicle sector.