Traditionally, high-volume low-mix production has been considered the best way to achieve optimal efficiency and quality. However, for many manufacturers in the United States, meeting customer requirements mean dealing with high-variation/low-volume environments.
High-mix approaches can offer advantages such as, better tailoring to specific customer demand, improved responsiveness to changing market demands and lower finished goods inventories. However, high-mix has traditionally been less efficient because of the inherent variations.
Some of the key challenges of high-mix production include:
- Dealing with more frequent changeover of production set-ups
- Maintaining high quality levels across a mix of configurations
- Potentially more complex logistics for managing piece-part inventories
A key to success with high-mix environments is to minimize these inherent downsides by leveraging configurable interconnect technologies in order to maximize the benefits of being able to offer a wider range of options from within the same production environment.
