Autor: Norbert Große Entrup

The increasing individualization of the customer needs and through this the rising number of product variants led to higher complexity in almost all enterprise processes. Customers are served by new products, in partly new markets and whatever a customer wishes is also taken into account. Over the time the product complexity increases more and more in the business fields and gets almost incalculable. Procedures are necessary, which are able to distinguish economic and not economic variants and provide a lasting guarantee of an optimal diversity of variants.

Profilerating product complexity has numerous reasons and consequences for the whole enterprise. Often these are unknown. The management of product complexity addresses neither the unifold maximization nor the minimization of product diversity. Managing product complexity, i. e. product range, product sequence and product assembly, means to achieve an optimum where high cus-tomer value can be reached whilst maintaining comparatively low cost of production. The VMEA method (Variant Mode and Effects Analysis) is designed and proven for the optimization of both the product assembly and the product functions. It facilitates a systematic and consequent approach to managing product complexity. Thus product complexity can be used as strategic success position and competitive advantage.