Assessment of static complexity in design and manufacturing of a product family and its impact on manufacturing performance

As products and their manufacturing systems have become more sophisticated and complex, both industry and academia have widely discussed complexity in product design and manufacturing to understand its impact. However, the impact of complexity on manufacturing performance has not been clearly articulated in the previous empirical studies despite the widely expected negative relationship between them. As a response, this paper considers static complexity, which is due to inherent structural characteristics in product design and manufacturing, to elucidate the impact of design and manufacturing complexity on manufacturing performance. Metrics to properly capture design and manufacturing complexity in a product family are proposed and applied to a screwdriver product family case. Then, regression analysis is performed to identify the impact of complexity on manufacturing performance under different demand levels and manufacturing strategies. As a result, the negative impacts of design and manufacturing complexity on lead time and total production cost and their changes commensurate to the increase in demand are observed under the make-to-order policy. On the other hand, similar negative impacts are not statistically significant under the make-to-stock policy. These results indicate that static complexity negatively affects manufacturing performance only in the make-to-order system; and the inventory held of common parts in the make-to-stock system decreases the influence of static complexity on manufacturing performance. & 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.