APPROACH TO VISUALIZE THE SUPPLY CHAIN COMPLEXITY INDUCED BY PRODUCT VARIETY

DS 68-5: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 11), Impacting Society through Engineering Design, Vol. 5: Design for X / Design to X, Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark, 15.-19.08.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Malmqvist, J.
Author: Brosch, Max; Beckmann, Gregor; Krause, Dieter
Series: ICED
Section: Design for X, Design to X
Page(s): 249-258

Abstract

Due to the high level of individualization and globalization, companies increase their product variety, which leads to an increased internal complexity at the level of the products, business processes and the SC. The Institute of Product Development and Mechanical Engineering Design (PKT) has developed the Integrated PKT approach for developing modular product families, to reduce the internal variety with methods, that are aiming to handle, to reduce and to avoid complexity. To extend this approach to the level of the supply chain, the method Deign for Supply Chain Requirements is under development. The important first step is to ascertain and to visualize the supply chain complexity induced by product variety. An approach to realize this first step is presented in this paper.

Keywords: SUPPLY CHAIN; PRODUCT VARIETY; DESIGN FOR SUPPLY CHAIN REQUIREMENTS; COMPLEXITY

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