Many small and medium size enterprises (SME) successfully offer high product variety as a strategy to compete against bigger companies. The trend of globalisation with more emerging companies on the market fosters this further. This strategy often leads to an increased internal variety of components and processes with higher complexity costs, which finally outweigh the intended profits. Lutz Elevators solved this problem by new module kit elevators and a corresponding configure-to-order process. Development and implementation of the modular product structures and processes were undertaken in the joint research project ModSupport with the Institute of Product Development and Mechanical Engineering Design at the Hamburg University of Technology. This paper gives a conclusion on the project case.
