An investigation of the impact of assembly sequencing on the product family design outcomes

While many approaches have been proposed to optimize the product family design for measures of cost, revenue and performance, many of these approaches fail to incorporate the complexity of the manufacturing issues into family design decision-making. One of these issues is assembly sequencing. This paper presents a simulation study by which the impact of assembly sequencing on the product family design outcomes is investigated. Overall, the results indicate that when the product family design takes into account the assembly sequencing decisions, the outcomes at the shop floor level improve. The results have implications for companies that are looking into increasing their revenue without increasing their investment in the shop floor.