Assessing the impact of new products on the factory

The rate at which modern markets demand new products puts an ever increasing burden on existing manufacturing facilities. Earlier work into new product introduction does not look at their impact on the existing manufacturing facility. Allowing a product range to grow unmanaged can pose operational problems. Research on models for measuring complexity in manufacturing suggest that plant structure can be assessed by a metric called static complexity. This reflects how the demand, and hence changes in the composition of that demand, are reflected on the distribution of work throughout the plant. Moreover, certain predictions can be made about how the plant will operate under the new configuration. The concept has allowed a model to be developed to assess how the complexity of the operation changes when new products are introduced, and how it affects delivery reliability, lead times and cost