The Influence of Mass Customization Strategy on Configuration Complexity of Assembly Systems

In current business environment many OEM companies are employing mass customization strategy, which has implication on the entire operations of an enterprise and especially influences the character of assembly processes. Increased product differentiation in context of customized production causes significant changes in complexity of assembly systems. Our focus in this paper is the development of methodological framework for generating all possible product configurations based on number of stable and optional components or modules from which a final product is completed. Subsequently, we propose an approach to determining so called product configuration complexity by specifying classes and sub-classes of product configurations. Then, for each sub-class of product configuration we can obtain upper bounds values of configuration complexity. Finally, configuration complexity scale based on the obtain upper bounds values is outlined and discussed.