Inter-relations between product variant codifications and assembly work for flexible manufacturing in autonomous groups

Abstract

This paper reports on the inter-relations between product variant codification used for specifying product variants and assembly work on the shop floor within a Swedish automobile corporation. The authors give an overview of a general codification scheme as well as product variants and also show how product variants are described from an assembly point of view in two final assembly plants. One plant has an old traditional short cycle-time assembly line, while the other new plant has a long cycle-time, parallelized flow and small work groups. Finally, the authors analyse how the product variants influence the assembly work. To conclude, a reformation of the product variant description is performed, which implies a far less complex product from an assembly point of view than implied by the traditional description methods.