Dealing with Temporal Change in Product Documentation for Manufacturing

Product documentation for manufacturing is subject to temporal change: Exchange of parts by successor models, shift from in-house production to external procurement, or assembly line reconfiguration are just a few examples. In this paper we show how DaimlerChrysler AG manages configuration for manufacturing of their Mercedes lines. Furthermore, we identify typical situations of change, their representation on the product documentation level, and how to keep the documentation consistent over time. We then develop two verification methods for computing the induced change at the parts level. Finally, we show how our methods can be applied to handle model year change and production relocation.