Assembly process design for managing manufacturing complexities because of product varieties

This paper comprehensively studies assembly process design (APD) to handle variety and presents a new approach to strategically manage manufacturing complexities because of product varieties. It links the chronological steps of APD to a general approach with a view to reduce both short and long term wastes. It synthesizes two strategic approaches, product and process-based, while exploiting the APD of an entire product family. A new evaluation method for measuring the complexities of an assembly system at different stages of design has been introduced by applying information entropy. The developed evaluation methodology explains the available techniques related to design, interprets them from a design for variety point of view, and leads to techniques to manage complexities in manufacturing. The suggested methodology has been applied to examples from automobile part manufacturers and has been found to be effective in understanding the complexities in manufacturing and leading to some strategies to manage variety.