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Variability in Products and Production

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Digital Transformation

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Abstract

Products and production are inherently variable. That is, the products themselves often need to be variable—as in a car plant producing many similar, albeit not identical cars. Such flexibility allows a product to be more easily customizable. We speak of variable products. At the same time, production systems typically need to be flexible in supporting the production of different products. Such flexibility allows for a broader use of production systems, supports lower production volumes while remaining economical, or optimizes production resources to avoid delays. We speak of variable production. This chapter explores variability in products and variability during production where product variability needs to be understood together with its implications on production. Special considerations are products that are consequently used during production and the issue of hardware/software variability, which is mostly handled separately today. We provide examples from an injection molding machine and also discuss open research challenges.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development, and Keba AG, Austria. Furthermore, we like to acknowledge funding by the Austrian COMET K1-Centre Pro2Future and the Austrian COMET Center K2 program of the Linz Center of Mechatronics of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) with funding from the Austrian ministries BMVIT and BMDW, and the Province of Upper Austria. Finally, we would like to acknowledge funding by the JKU LIT Secure and Correct System Lab (co-funded by the Province of Upper Austria).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Software Systems Engineering, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria

    Alexander Egyed & Paul Grünbacher

  2. Institute of Software Engineering and Automotive Informatics, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Lukas Linsbauer & Ina Schaefer

  3. Institute for System Software, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria

    Herbert Prähofer

  4. Institut für Informationssicherheit und Verlässlichkeit (KASTEL), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Ina Schaefer

Authors
  1. Alexander Egyed
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  2. Paul Grünbacher
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  3. Lukas Linsbauer
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  4. Herbert Prähofer
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  5. Ina Schaefer
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Correspondence to Paul Grünbacher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität München, Garching b. München, Bayern, Germany

    Birgit Vogel-Heuser

  2. Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Oberösterreich, Austria

    Manuel Wimmer

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Egyed, A., Grünbacher, P., Linsbauer, L., Prähofer, H., Schaefer, I. (2023). Variability in Products and Production. In: Vogel-Heuser, B., Wimmer, M. (eds) Digital Transformation. Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65004-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65004-2_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg

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