variant management

Customer orientation and individualization will be two of the biggest challenges for companies. They need to expect their business model to become more complex as the range and diversity of their products and services will increase. Those who find a smart approach of managing the complexity will have a decisive competitive advantage. Those who use modularization across products, services, production and the organisation, will be prepared to deliver individual value propositions more quickly and their profitability will not be jeopardised by their own complexity.

Today in mechanical engineering it is hardly possible to elude the demands for a variant-rich product spectrum. The resulting complexity can be reduced and controlled only by effective and efficient variant management. This article presents the product structuring as one of the central tasks of variant management in product development. The structuring determines the characteristics of the product just as the development process and has substantial influence on every process in the enterprise.

In a highly competitive environment characterized by decreasing life cycles, lower profit margins and a stronger individualization of products enterprises are forced to adopt new strategies to stand the challenges of the market. The article describes the framework of an integrated complexity management including methods, models and information technology for the identification, the control, the reduction and the prevention of activities without any productivity in direct and indirect sectors of the supply chain.