Variety-driven design to reduce complexity costs of a tire curing press family

As a result of the prevailing megatrends, many companies are diversifying their product program further and further. Additional product variants are being developed in order to implement the increasing variety of offers. However, these variants increase the complexity within the company. The development of variety-oriented product structures is one way to counteract this increasing complexity. In this contribution, we will show how variety-oriented product structures can be developed with the help of the Design for Variety Method (DfV), using the example of a tire curing press. Furthermore, a new visualization of variety is introduced and it is shown how DfV and complexity cost analysis can be used to evaluate variety-oriented product concepts. Finally, an outlook on further possible research topics is given.