Impacts of product-driven complexity on the success of logistics in the automotive sector

Globalization and higher market heterogeneity have led to a substantial increase of model variety in the automotive sector. Caused by the necessity to integrate a growing number of models into existing plant structures a considerable increase of complexity is observable within the OEMs' manufacturing plants, especially in logistics. This often has a negative effect on the companies' processes and cost structures. To examine these impacts on logistics, structural equation modeling isused in this paper to determine causalities between indicators for product-complexity and logistics KPIs. Furthermore, a method for the operationalization of product-driven complexity is provided and implemented in a use case. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.