An Integral Model for Mapping Variant Production in Supply Chains

The capability to efficiently manage product-variety is nowadays a critical success factor for many companies. However, existing models still lack a suitable support for mapping and analyzing variant productions. The paper contributes to this area with a comprehensive but practicable approach. Product families are defined through common attributes with differentiating characteristics. Product structures and process plans of variants belonging to the same product family are represented using generic “plan skeletons”. It is shown how the approach can thereby reduce modeling efforts and enhance the clarity of the resulting model. Furthermore, linking such a model to a simulation allows for assigning performance indicators to the product family’s attributes instead of many product variants. Variant-induced costs can thus be disclosed as additional costs compared to a base product for each