Today, the growing trend towards a stronger customer orientation, in connection with the high competitive pressure, forces enterprises to set up an efficient variant production. In line production, customer-specific variants are manufactured together on one assembly line at constant throughput times. On the part of the customers, the advantages of variant line production are in shorter throughput times and a higher adherence to schedules. From the enterprises’ point of view, their objectives to reduce inventories and increase capacity utilisation are pursued. However, the productivity of this type of manufacturing organisation is largely depending on the capacities used.

The balancing of cycle times on an assembly line is a demanding task already in series production. The varying work content in line production of variants, however, creates a planning complexity which is partly hard to control.

The idea of developing the software tool linelogix.® (see linelogix) arose from a project of IAP GmbH executed with a well-known manufacturer of commercial vehicles. A prototype of linelogix.® has later been implemented at this customer. It provides planning support through simulation of the effects of changes in processes, organisation and products - from facility layout to staff assignment planning - and works on the basis of current production programme data. In this way, time is saved and unnecessary costs through bad planning can be avoided.