Enabling the identification of multi-product assembly system architectures - a new method and its application in the automotive industry

Product variety, in combination with today's unstable market environment, brings strong challenges to manufacturing firms. Single-product assembly systems become difficult to implement as the return on investment is difficult to obtain with decreasing lot sizes and unstable customer demands. Multi-product assembly systems are a possible solution to this problem, as they allow to compensate demand fluctuations throughout the product mix. However, variety is a strong barrier to this kind of production systems. A new method is presented in this paper to identify multi-product assembly system architectures adapted to a product family, based on the identification of components for common positioning. This method has been applied to a supplier in the automotive industry and a return of experience of this case study is provided, highlighting its potentials and barriers.