Analysis of generic product information representation models

Production systems are changing to meet customers' increasingly demand for customised products and lower delivery times. Mass customization is a production paradigm used in organizations that aim at satisfying these customers. In these new high product diversity and customization environments, production information systems must be able to deal with a large number of product variants in an efficient way. Generic referencing models aim to answer this objective in the representation of product information for production planning and control systems. Three generic referencing models are characterised according to part identification and bill of materials (BOM) representation. Furthermore, application of generic referencing in an industrial case is presented and compared with direct referencing models.