A simulated annealing method based on a clustering approach to determine bills of materials for a large product family

Defining an efficient bill of materials for a family of complex products is a real challenge for companies, largely because of the diversity they offer to consumers. To remain competitive, their products are available with many variants and options, which leads to a difficult question: “How can a bill of materials be defined so that all possible products can be built efficiently?” One way to answer it is to define a set of components (called modules), each of which contains a set of primary functions. An individual product is then built by combining selected modules. This industrial problem leads, in turn, to the complex optimization problem we study in this paper, which we propose to solve using a simulated annealing method based on a clustering approach.