Product variety in many industries has increased steadily throughout this century. Component sharing---using the same version of a component across multiple products---is increasingly viewed by companies as a way to offer high variety in the marketplace while retaining low variety in their...

Component sharingÔusing the same version of a component across multiple productsÔis an approach adopted by many assembled-product manufacturers to achieve high final product variety with lower component variety and cost. This paper presents a methodology for determining which versions of a set...