Assessment of flexible quantities and product variants in production

An increasing product variety causes different cost effects in several divisions of a company. These effects have to be identified in order to compare them to potential revenues. However, at the time strategic market decisions have to be made, not all detailed information about product variants and quantities are available. Analyses of future cost development and the choice of the manufacturing system are difficult and uncertain. Within the framework of the project “VireS” a simulation algorithm was developed at the Institute of Production Science (wbk) to simulate future developments of life cycle costs of manufacturing systems depending on quantities and varieties in an uncertain environment.