Enabling Integrated Product and Factory Configuration in Smart Production Ecosystems

Traditionally, product configuration and production configuration processes are executed separately by different stakeholders in different phases of the product life cycle. With increasing demand for individualized products, the need for flexible production processes, modular factories and intelligent production infrastructures is also increasing. Therefore, the production environment must be continuously (re-)configured to meet production requirements of individualized products ("lot size one"). In order to simplify the value chain from product configuration to manufacturing of the individualized product, we propose to integrate product and production configuration - giving rise to a new methodology for variability management in smart production ecosystems. Such an ecosystem brings factory vendors, product designers, sellers and end-customers together. In this paper we propose novel concepts and algorithms for a holistic configuration approach required to support product designers, factory operators and end-users in a common marketplace. We present initial results from a pilot study.