Optimizing the cost of variety in wiring harnesses

Historically, automotive companies have focused on understanding the piece costs of a wire harness and, in many cases, largely ignored the impact of harness variation complexity on the overall costs absorbed by the organization. This white paper provides a methodology for defining these factors so that they can be modeled, and gives guidance on modeling methods based on how harness variability affects overall costs— Register to download it now!

Manage the challenge of wire harness complexity management costs

An automotive wire harness rarely has a single part number that can be ordered and installed in a vehicle. Typically, there are many different versions of the same harness based on the orderable content in the vehicle. These versions, often called harness levels, will have unique part numbers. The quantity of these levels and their content is called complexity, which has a significant impact on the cost of the harness.

Quantify complexity related costs in harness variations

Quantifying complexity-related costs in harness variations is often very difficult, especially with manual deriving and costing. Therefore traditionally, wire harness costing has focused on the piece cost of each harness level. Siemens provides a methodology to quantify complexity-related costs in wire harness variations to model them, allowing automated algorithms to optimize for these costs.

Model complexity management costs in wire harness manufacturing

Several factors contribute to complexity management costs in wire harness manufacturing, such as engineering, development, production, inventory, logistics, sequencing, and obsolescence. Siemens encourages wire harness manufacturers to consider new methodologies for capturing and modeling complexity management costs to utilize an automated optimization solution to fully understand the incurring costs and optimize designs accordingly.