Production System Design and Configuration Framework (PSDCF)

Designing coherent production systems requires combining transferable design knowledge with context-specific decisions. Existing approaches address goal–means relationships, design principles, reusable design knowledge, configuration, or interdependencies, but integrate these perspectives only to a limited extent. This paper therefore develops the Production System Design and Configuration Framework (PSDCF). It structures transferable design knowledge as a preconfiguration of a design logic and understands configuration as the context-specific concretization of deliberately retained design degrees of freedom. Vertical, horizontal, and contextual coherence serve as complementary assessment perspectives; the Production System Interaction Model (PSIM) additionally provides knowledge of causal effects for interdependent design decisions. Illustrative applications to Lean Production and selected configuration decisions demonstrate the framework's explanatory potential. The PSDCF has been developed and conceptually substantiated; systematic empirical evaluation remains a task for future research.