Product Data Supply

The implementation and adaption of the Toyota Production System during the 90’s of the last century brought a significant change to the organization of production especially in large scale and mass production for example automotive industries. This change is especially evident for the functioning of material supply. Before the organizational change workers in manufacturing and assembly had to manage the supply of materials mostly on their own. Nowadays this function is handled by the logistics department in most cases. The advantage of this reorganization was a stronger concentration of workers on their main tasks. In the beginning the change process in material supply was considered very skeptically. Today most experts are certain that producing industries cannot meet rising market requirements without an efficient logistics department. This fact is especially true for manufacturing and assembly in high wage countries like Germany. Till now the described change process has not yet been adapted for upstream departments and processes like engineering or production planning. So, today many engineers and planners spend a lot of their work-time on searching and preparing information necessary for their tasks. With less time available for their main planning tasks creative potential of these employees is significantly reduced. This potential can be fully utilized by an adaption of the developments in production since the 1990’s. In comparison with the functioning of logistic departments, the supply of planning departments with necessary planning data has to be reorganized. This function is especially crucial for the supply of appropriate and up-to-date product data, so-called product data supply. Current challenges, requirements and potentials of product data supply are discussed in this paper besides further advantages of organizational and procedural anchoring in producing companies.