Variant-oriented Assembly Planning

To remain competitive, companies have to fulfil the requirements of their customers for individualised products of high quality. Thus, they have to become capable of managing the continuously rising number of product variants, especially in assembly planning. As the current variant management concepts are not adequate, this paper deals with a novel approach towards an integrated consideration of all required product and process variants. A generalised product description that can be enhanced with assembly features represents an optimal initial point for assembly planning. The implementation of so-called variant junctions allows for the regard of variants within the planning of the required assembly processes.