Simultaneous standardisation of modules and their components: a global economic perspective

This paper deals with the problem of simultaneous standardisation of a set of modules and of several sets of components that may be combined in these modules. The aim is to minimise future costs of production and procurement. We introduce a multilevel standardisation that permits to link the level of forecasts used in manufacturing companies with the modules. This formulation determines the composition of the module i.e. their Bill of Material instead of using a predetermined one. The model takes into account coupling restrictions between components and also permits to modelise the possibility of lifting some of them through ‘junction components’. Our model proposes an efficient approach to deal with temporal dimension in the standardisation process. This approach is illustrated with a real case from the automotive industry and some of the related implementation problems are discussed.