A well-performing product realisation process in order to introduce new products with high frequency to a low cost, is becoming more of a pre-requisite for manufacturing companies. In a multiple case study, this paper investigates applied industrial practices in production development to support the production realisation process and reports on the current ways of working and challenges therein. The areas of current production development practices, production platforms, standardised work, and knowledge development are explored. Identified challenges towards long-term production development based on the explored areas are presented. The inclusion of future need of production system adaptions from future products is argued for to increase its efficiency. Through including future need of the production system, the notion of considering one product at the time during industrialisation is challenged and a more proactive perspective can be taken. The production platform approach is considered as one enabler for such an improved production development.

The product realisation process is one of several formalized supports for industrial actors to excel in concurrent engineering procedures. To satisfy customers today mass customization is increasingly in need, requiring delicate modular architectures, both in product designs and production. Emerging is also the digitalized co-platforming era of automating the synchronization of product and production platforms. Yet, in all these processes, humans as agents have different roles, objectives, and mental models that governs their decision-making, being the bearer of separate ideas on what to optimize from their end. In product development large sensitivity is given to customer demands and trends to design attractive products, while less attention may be placed on evaluating the increase of variation into the production flows from new products, potentially increasing the workload and complexity of assembly systems, as well as, the subsequent material logistics. In production, much effort is invested to increase standardization, increase the pace, and minimize the manufacturing cost, with the objective to minimize required changes to the current production system. Consequently, it is a hard problem to satisfy all criteria at once, and how to solve it has no clear answer. Therefore, this study has applied qualitative System Dynamics modelling, also often referred to as systems thinking, to investigate how these opposing views were represented at an industrialized house builder. The purpose was to explore and model the perspectives and mental models of two leading roles to model their conflicting objectives. As a result, an overall model of main interactions of product and production development is proposed to support interpreting the findings, visualize the identified conflicting dynamics, and work as a vehicle for analysis.

Production platforms can be considered as the foundation for the design, development, and reconfiguration of a production system. Even though, the product platform domain has been extensively researched and applied widely in practice, this is not the case in the production domain regarding production platforms and reconfigurable production systems. Therefore, this paper reviews the current product and production platform literature to distinguish the production platform co-development research. A systematic literature review has been carried out to explore the concept of production platforms and pinpoint what research gaps that needs to be bridged.

The traditional way of developing production systems is often limited by merely considering an imminent new product. The longevity of a production system’s lifecycle is at risk following this approach and may create a focus on the current functionality and capacity rather than on fulfilling future product requirements. Changeable production address this challenge, however, support for production engineers to consider more changeable solutions is lacking. Thus, this paper proposes support for evaluating production capabilities and mapping how new products may impact the production system. The support is developed in two industrial cases which studied current production capabilities and future requirements put on two automatic assembly lines. The support allows for estimates of the cost of repurposing the assembly lines to accommodate the new products and paves the way for seeing beyond the dedicated manufacturing paradigm towards increased levels of changeable production.