Co-Evolution of Product Families and Assembly Systems

To cope with the intense global competition that is characterized by high product variety and short life cycles, manufacturers need to share manufacturing systems across products and product generations. Co-evolution of product families and assembly systems is proposed as a novel methodology for the joint design and reconfiguration of product families and assembly systems over several product generations. The co-evolution methodology capitalizes on the opportunities for design and assembly system reuse that are offered by modular product architectures and reconfigurable assembly systems. As a result, co-evolution can lead to reduced product development costs and increased responsiveness to market changes.