Managing product variety through component commonality: Concept and application

In this paper, we have reviewed and analysed different factors and issues for product variety management and their effects on production planning strategies. An example is taken from a truck manufacturing company to demonstrate how component commonality issue influences on developing product-mix within same product family. Agile supply and demand network software is used to investigate the commonality value and its effects on product variety management. We have also applied design structure matrix methodology for better ordering or sequencing of components in order to create clusters or modules which might be useful for making variety.