Product family formation based on complexity for assembly systems

System complexity in development of products for the automated assembly systems causes significant issues, if left unaddressed. Products with similar level of complexity tend to cause similar issues in production. Development of product families based on complexity is an important tool to avoid such issues. This paper presents a novel approach to classify the products based on complexity level for assembly systems. Assembly aspects are then used, which define the complexity levels of individual parts. The individual part complexity level is further merged with the assembly sequence in the form of binary rooted trees. Hierarchical clustering is also employed to find the similarity coefficients of different products. These products are finally segregated based on the generated coefficients. Four products are used as a part of thorough case study to show the working principle of the proposed approach along with the results and associated discussion.