Product family design and logistics decision support system

The purpose of the paper is to present Product Variety Analysis (PVA) approach to coordinated and synchronized flows of information about products and production processes among various supply chain members. The cost based PVA is developed by presenting cost modeling according to three factors in the cost model, namely part cost, development cost, and production cost. The results show that cost based PVA enables a product designer for producing higher commonality product family to reducing total costs per component. Developing commonality metric by including component price should be carried out in the future in considering component support to product family profitability. In terms of managerial implication, coordination between the manufacturing process and product development department facilitate supply chain design. Cost based PVA shows the novelty of this paper.