THE IMPACT OF PART CHARACTERISTICS ON THE DECISION OF KITTING VERSUS LINE STOCKING

The increasing product variety in the automotive industry leads to an increasingly complex materials supply in automotive assembly. The high number of variant parts continues to proliferate, so bringing these parts to the line in a cost-effective manner can generate a considerable advantage over competitors. This paper discusses the generation of test instances for a computational study to investigate the link between part characteristics and the most cost-effective materials supply method, i.e. kitting or line stocking. An optimal organization of the materials supply is determined by use of a mixed-integer programming model. Results are discussed.