Handling product configuration changes during assembly

Abstract

Configuration changes of customizable products during assembly are disruptive for the assembly line and are therefore often avoided. Nevertheless, allowing changes to customer-specific product configurations until late steps into the final assembly can be a competitive advantage as long as the negative effects on the assembly line can be mitigated. This paper proposes a method to efficiently handle such configuration changes while keeping the disruption of the assembly line as minimal as possible. The method assesses the criticality of change requests based on their severity and the assembly progress of the product. Based on this categorization an optimal time slot during the assembly process is identified to perform any additional work associated with a change request. These additional work contents can occur from necessary disassembly and different or additional assembly processes. The validation of the method for a final assembly line of large and complex products showed that it can reduce the additional workload by 26 % and the prolongation of the throughput time by 78 % on average.