Proactive Complexity Steering for Ramp-up Planning in Assembly

An increasing degree of product individualisation and thus a higher number of variants along with shortening product lifecycles led to an increasing number of new model launches. Hence, for many industry sectors the ramp-up of new products has become daily business. Thereby, the ramp-up phase of a new model is characterised as a very dynamic process with high time pressure and a high degree of complexity. This paper aims is to design a methodology for proactive complexity steering of new model ramp-ups in assembly. The approach includes the identification of complexity drivers and enablers, examines their influence and presents a calculation for predicting the manageable level of complexity an organisation can cope with.