Variantenmanagement

VDMA 2011

24 pages

Member price visible after registration

ISBN 978-3-8163-0618-4

Variant management is a highly effective set of methods for planning, avoiding, reducing and controlling individual product designs. Methods that are applied holistically and anchored in the PLM process open up opportunities to improve business potential in a targeted manner. This guide provides interested companies with an initial overview of this topic. Starting with the product-market strategy, through product development to the automated control of variants in complex quotation, order processing and value creation processes, the guide serves as a point of reference. The aim of this guide is to provide a better understanding of the overall context and to offer initial guidance on the relationship between sales and costs, between product variants and internal waste due to process complexity, and between opportunities and risks.

When applied in a targeted manner, it is possible to deliver individually configurable products without sacrificing process efficiency and cost-optimised repeat production. In this way, the variety of variants required by the customer can be largely accommodated and considerable cost reduction potential can be tapped. High performance, individuality and low costs no longer have to be a contradiction in terms.

This guide is aimed at specialists and managers from the sales, design and manufacturing environments of variant and/or contract manufacturers, as well as organisational and IT managers who deal with the topic of variant technology and its implementation.

Contents:

• What is variant management?
• Who might need it?
• How can you recognise the need for variant management?
• What are the benefits?
• What methods can be used?
• What solutions are available?
• Solutions for managing product variance
• Overview and description of possible organisational methods and tools
• The use of variant management using typical application examples of variant configurators
• Table for self-positioning