COMMONALITY INDICES IN DESIGN AND PRODUCTION PLANNING

Parts commonality is an ignored topic in most of the studies in milieu of manufacturing resource planning. In real world manufacturing settings, parts commonalities occur in their own ways or can be planned for their preferred happening. The use of common components for different products in a company is important for managing product variety and maintaining competitiveness in this age of mass customization and supply chain struggle. The ever-increasing intricacy in manufacturing systems has generated a demand on global scale for more effective techniques to optimize the resource utilization and to efficiently contend with parts commonality. Numerous advantages of parts commonality in manufacturing systems including reduction of costs and lead times are reported in literatures. The main objectives of this paper are to (i) study the commonality indices in design and production planning reported in literatures since 1980 and (ii) some useful insights including advantages and disadvantages of using commonality in manufacturing/production system. It is observed that in designing a new family of products/processes or analyzing an existing family, commonality indices can often be used as a preliminary summit. Systematic understanding and suitable use of commonality and commonality indices can help managing inventory levels, uncertainties and cost dimensions