INTERRELATIONS BETWEEN PRODUCT VARIANT CODIFICATIONS AND ASSEMBLY WORK FOR FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING IN AUTONOMOUS GROUPS

This paper reports on the inter-relations between product variant codi fication used for specifying product variants and assembly work on the shop floor within a Swedish automobile corporation. The authors give an overview of a general codification scheme as well as product varian ts and also show how product variants are described from an assembly p oint of view in two final assembly plants. One plant has an old tradit ional short cycle-time assembly line, while the other new plant has a long cycle-time, parallelized flow and small work groups. Finally, the authors analyse how the product variants influence the assembly work. To conclude, a reformation of the product variant description is perf ormed, which implies a far less complex product from an assembly point of view than implied by the traditional description methods.