Strategies for Configurable Materials 

Definition

A configurable material is a material for which different variants are possible.

The strategies for configurable materials allow you to plan products with an almost unlimited number of possible combinations of characteristics and combination value keys. Use these strategies if you want to plan a product that uses a feasible combination of characteristic values and that does not include final assembly. Typical examples of such products are cars, elevators, forklifts, trucks, buses.

Variants, as described in Material Variants, could not be used to plan these products because you had to create billions of variants. Entering usage probabilities for characteristic values instead allows you to plan materials that have a large number of variants. This procedure also improves change management for the components because planning is separated from construction changes.

Structure

A configurable material can have a few or very many variants, as the following examples demonstrate:

The number of characteristics and characteristic values (in other words, the variance) of a material is a key factor when choosing the right planning strategy. Planning a few variants differs drastically from planning thousands or millions of variants. Before you choose a planning strategy for a configurable material, you must consider the possible number of variants.

Integration

By choosing an appropriate approach to planning, you can reduce the complexity of planning. For example:

See also:

Variant Configuration