SUMMARY
Modern industrial manufacturing systems are highly affected by the ever-increasing product variety and volatile market demands introduced by the mass customization paradigm. The expansion of mass customization is dependent on developing methods and tools that support engineers throughout the product development process. Assembly is the capstone of product realization process and also the key stage to add variety into products. An assembly system which is designed to be applicable for high variety products is the key enabler to MC. It consists of multiple stages of design and decision making problems including process design, configuration, system layout, planning and balancing. As the variety increases, the complexity grows exponentially. Traditional all-in-one optimization with mathematical programming is no longer suitable for such kind of computational and organizational complexities. This research focuses on optimal assembly system design for high variety products, which is vital for realization of mass customization in general manufacturing practices. Through the research of variety modeling, process modularization, assembly system configuration for high variety products and operation planning, a generic technical solution of high variety assembly system design will be proposed and afterwards validated via case studies. The complex assembly system design decision making problem is also studied based on game theory.